[META-TREND 09] Companies' Tight Race Toward the Metaverse

Hello, this is Chris & Partners! 🤗 If we name the keyword that brought the biggest change to companies in 2021, isn't it the metaverse? Across many fields—employment, education, communication—we saw not only private companies but governments and public institutions using the metaverse. With the metaverse still a hot keyword in 2022, the moves of companies at home and abroad toward it are remarkable. Let's look at what issues there are!

HOT TOPIC_01: Kakao's crisis breakthrough is the ‘metaverse’—a special mission for CEO Namkoong Whon to ‘pioneer new land’

Source: Kakao

Kakao is putting forward new leadership andreorganizing its business around the metaverse. On the 20th, Kakao Chairman Kim Beom-su announced in a post on Kakao's internal board that Namkoong Whon, head of Kakao's Future Initiative Center, was named the next Kakao CEO. The new Kakao CEO Namkoong is an online-game expert highly regarded in Korea, who played a big role in elevating Kakao Games into a global comprehensive game company by making hits of ‘Black Desert,’ ‘PUBG,’ ‘Odin,’ and more. In a Facebook post, the new CEO emphasized, ‘We must newly construct all our business strategy from the perspective of pioneering new land again,’ and ‘Reorganizing the company around the metaverse to pioneer new land, rather than technological innovation in the existing world, is the way to uphold both the public's demands and Kakao's founding spirit.’ He also said, ‘Our Kakao community holds all three stages of the digital world(text, sound and image, multimedia),’ adding, ‘Based on this, we're pondering how to newly construct the metaverse world.’ We look forward to Kakao's path as it cultivates the new land of the metaverse.

HOT TOPIC_02: MS acquires Blizzard… the metaverse-leadership race already heating up

Source: Reuters News

Abroad, too, competition to take leadership of the metaverse ecosystem is fierce. MS CEO Satya Nadella announced the acquisition of Blizzard for $68.7 billion (about ₩81.9 trillion). The Washington Post (WP) reported the deal is the largest among recent M&As. Blizzard has made few virtual-reality games considered an element of the metaverse, but since recent video games are all set to interact with 3D-designed virtual worlds or 3D-created virtual figures, Blizzard's technology is expected to serve as a stepping stone for building MS's metaverse platform. MS's gaming-division CEO Phil Spencer said, ‘Whatever the metaverse becomes, gaming will be at the forefront of making it mainstream.’ This Blizzard acquisition is also expected to strengthen MS's competitiveness against its video-game rival Sony. Once the acquisition is complete, MS will become the world's No. 3 game company by revenue, after China's Tencent and Japan's Sony.

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Presidential-election vote-count broadcast via the metaverse too… ‘Together,KBS' Read the article

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Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange exhibition ‘Statue Garden’ opens in the metaverseRead the article

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Companies diving into the metaverse…Ralph Lauren ‘to target the new generation’Read the article

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Baidu, unveils China's first metaverse, XiRangRead the article

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DGB Financial Group, buys a second main branch in the virtual world… fast metaverse responseRead the article That was META-TREND, with the latest metaverse trends. 😎 Digital events & marketing—prepare your event with the industry's Digital Transformation leading group, Chris & Partners, specialized in it. With proven, outstanding capability, we'll create a satisfying event from planning to operation.