Originally published on my Patreon
Courtesy Tyche Shepherd, Second Life's unofficial (but highly qualified) demographer, here's a chart of SL activity since the mobile app was made free to play in mid-November. She shared these peak concurrency numbers -- i.e. how many people are logged in the most during a given period -- after I asked her if she'd seen any usage trend upward since the app's launch. (See above.)
"No, it hasn't, there was no noticeable uplift in in 7 day moving average of concurrency metrics around the public release on the 13th." (Check out the data for yourself on her Grid Survey site.)
So that's surprising! Especially now that over 100,000 SLers have downloaded it. My interpretation is that existing SL users are trying it out, but it's not (yet) increasing their overall usage or changing their log-in behavior. I'm talking with Linden heads Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale next week, so will hopefully have more insight then.
At any rate, this also means I muffed one of my metaverse predictions for 2024:
Thanks to the launch of its mobile app, Second Life increases peak CCU by at least 20%. Jury is still out whether Second Life's upcoming iOS/Android app actually grows the total user base with new users (especially if the initial launch targets existing users) but I do think we'll see it enabling more of the existing user base log into SL more often. Peak Second Life concurrency is now around 50,000 (hat tip: Daniel), so growing that by 20% to 60,000 seems quite feasible!
So, well, whoops. And also: Dang.
Anyway, here's a review of my other predictions on new startups, acquisitions, ROBLOX growth, and Apple VisionPro adoption:
A new, well-funded metaverse platform launches. Likeliest candidates include Everywhere from Grand Theft Auto veterans and Playable Worlds from Raph Koster and crew. I say "well-funded" because we also sure to see some bootstrapped or crowdfunded projects hit the market as well. (I may know of some!)
I got than one right, if just barely: Koster's Stars Reach, the first hub of his metaverse platform, launched in closed beta last June.
Another prediction:
A leading metaverse platform start-up is acquired or goes on an IPO track. Here some probable candidates are Fortnite developer Epic (still a private company) and Rec Room, which worked with Apple to integrate with the coming VisionPro.
While there were some whispers Meta might acquire VRChat... nope.
Speaking of the VisionPro (and come to think of it, we haven't really spoken about it in awhile):
Apple's VisionPro goes on sale, sells between 100K-250K units in 2024. This might seem like a small number, but at $3500 and a completely new device/platform for Apple, that would be quite impression.
That looked right at the beginning of the year, and still does now. ("Vision Pro will sell an estimated 224,000 units this year," says AR Insider last October.)
Final prediction I made for this year:
Roblox MAU passes US population. This prediction feels a bit like a cheat, since Roblox passed 300 million MAU earlier this year, but hopefully this milestone will force a reconsideration of that whole false "the Metaverse is dead" narrative.
And, yes, that prediction came true as early as last January:
"According to leading Roblox analytics service RTrack, Roblox had an estimated 354 million monthly active users in December 2023," I wrote then. "In other words, yes: Roblox now has more monthly active users worldwide than the USA has people. (I.E. 336 million, give or take.)"
We haven't quite had that reconsideration around "the Metaverse is dead" narrative yet, but I'll make that one of my predictions for 2025.
As for my 2024 predictions, let's grade them 3 for 5 right. So give me a C+ or maybe B- on a curve?
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