Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and their flagship VR brand Horizon have launched Horizon Worlds, a new virtual platform that will allow users to buy/sell digital collectibles and land. They released a 20 minute video detailing how it will work, but here’s a quick summary.
Meta revealed that they are setting up a $10M creator fund to incentivize creators to join the platform to boost popularity. They teased a “Wendyverse” or a virtual Wendy’s, hinting that popular brands will join the platform and sell virtual goods.
Most shockingly, the Meta will be taking exactly a 47.5% sales cut on anything sold through Horizon Worlds. For comparison sake, Amazon takes an average of 15%, the Apple Store 30%, and OpenSea (And NFT platform) only 2.5%. Still, a tough pill to swallow as a creator when the platform takes roughly half of your sales.
They have cornered the market though, Oculus their premier VR headset brand has a daily active user rate in the few million. The amount of people exploring this platform has more active daily users than most crypto projects and Oculus owners are no strangers to innovative tech like blockchain. Meta’s bet on the Metaverse seems to be a well calculated one and will become extremely profitable if it gains the mass adoption that they predict. Only time will tell, but Meta is making big moves towards the ever more virtual world we live in.