My Metaverse Predictions for 2024. What Are Yours?

Some predictions for 2024 before we hit the New Year:

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!)

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.

Speaking of which…

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.

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.

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!

How about you, lovely reader? Post your own predictions for highlighting next week, the more specific and easy to validate, the better!