> Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World
This is what everyone said about Lego, and a bunch of other collabs that came before. It was never true and it's not true now. Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.
> Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.
Arguably, there are people who want a "virtual world" -- and they currently just play Roblox to get it. Enough of them like it, that every major retailer stocks "Robux" gift cards
Steam has a ton of social features too, and that helps keep it popular. Is it a "virtual world"? I don't think anyone would define it that way.
The primary thing you do in Roblox is pick a game you want to play, which is largely isolated from the other games. Plenty of people will never touch the social features.
Some of the most annoying cash grabs I've seen were the ingame music festivals attempted by several video games in 2019-2021.
It turns out that when you can't even get audio synced up so that everyone is hearing the same music, the vast majority of the artists bail or drop a pre-recorded set because they weren't informed how a hypothetical live playback mechanism would work, and you don't even have the rights to the game it's based on... you don't have a polished experience, you have a metaverse scam.
A bunch of the collabs have been super successful. They don’t need to build a permanent Second Life type metaverse BS. Look at their concerts in Fortnite’s universe. Very successful at attracting eyes and money.
“Virtual Disney world” doesn’t mean VR roller coasters, it means Disney themed digital experiences (eg fun games). Disney and Epic have a decent track record building fun and profitable experiences for people.
To be fair, you did mention replicating the “Disney park experience IRL”, so yes it does mean VR Disney rides since that’s the closest that you’ll get to that experience. A flat screen is not going to come close to it.
Just for context, there are ~26,000 people signed in to the LEGO version of Fortnite right now, and it's 11pm Pacific/2am Eastern (there are ~179,000 people on the standard Fortnite). At primetime, there are typically 100,000+ people on the LEGO Fortnite.
Which FYI puts it in the same league as War Thunder and Team Fortress 2, ie, a profitable free to play game, but not exactly important in terms of redefining culture or being The Next Big Thing.
Hell, RUST is an old, mediocre, "Cursed runes" survival MMO crafting-them-up and it has 100k people playing right now, despite tens of better versions of the exact game formula having been released since.
100k players mid-day is "has-been" multiplayer video game territory. It's "also-ran" MMO territory.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 has 30k people playing right now
All these options are more than the people playing Cyberpunk lol
This is what everyone said about Lego, and a bunch of other collabs that came before. It was never true and it's not true now. Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.