Nifty News: Chinese firms to offer World Cup metaverse viewings, X2Y2 backtracks on royalties, and more
China-based technology companies are reportedly working on tech that would give Chinese soccer fans the ability to watch the FIFA World Cup within the Metaverse.
The efforts are part of a five-year plan released by the Chinese government in early November to boost the capabilities and development of the local Virtual Reality (VR) industry.
Video streaming platform Migu is one of six Chinese firms that has secured the rights to show the World Cup and plans to create a “Metaverse-like” space accessed through VR headsets for users to watch a live stream of the game, according to a Nov. 20 report from the state-run media outlet Global Times.
ByteDance, who owns TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin received licensing rights to air the competition, with ByteDance’s VR headset subsidiary Pico offering live broadcasts of the World Cup with the ability for users to create and hang out in “digital rooms” to watch the game together.
The World Cup is seemingly being used by China’s nascent VR industry as a testbed for the technology, as the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology along with four other agencies pushed an ambitious industry plan on Nov. 1.
The five-year plan from 2022 until 2026 outlined that China wants to bolster its VR industry and ship over 25 million units to the tune of $48.56 billion, although the plan doesn’t clarify if its unit target is annually or cumulative over the life of the plan.
The stated plans don’t mention whether the Metaverse will utilize blockchain technology, such as the one posed by the Chinese city of Wuhan which was later revised to remove reference to nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
NFT marketplace X2Y2 has backtracked on its opt-in royalties play, saying in a Nov. 18 Twitter thread
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