Depending on who you talk to, the metaverse is already dead. Or it may be alive and well. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently published a brief obituary and open wake invitation for the tech movement in a message on Twitter -- but be sure to read it with your sarcasm detectors piqued and fully up to date. 

Sweeney's statement is poking fun at proclamations that the metaverse trend has lost steam and is floundering. In particular, it's a response to an article published by EZPR CEO Ed Zitron in Business Insider, in which the public-relations executive suggested that factors including the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) had killed the metaverse. Will the rise of persistent online virtual worlds really wind up being so short lived?

The metaverse is dead, long live the metaverse

As Sweeney points out, leading metaverses continue to enjoy strong levels of engagement, and the rise of generative AI technologies could actually be a huge boon to top virtual-world platforms. Not only does generative AI offer opportunities to significantly improve developer productivity, it also opens the door for metaverse users to easily create the kinds of virtual items, environments, character, and scenarios they would most like to see.  

There's no doubt that AI is the hottest thing in the tech sector right now, and it will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. But it's probably a mistake to frame long-term success for these two tech trends as being mutually exclusive. 

Epic Games, which is owned by Chinese media conglomerate Tencent, certainly seems to believe that the metaverse still presents viable growth opportunities. In addition to leading a multi-billion-dollar partnership with Sony and KIRKBI (which owns the Lego Company) to advance metaverses, Epic's Fortnite remains very popular, and the company's Unreal development engine is being used by third-party metaverse projects.  

Sweeney is right to point out that many existing metaverses are already enjoying very strong engagement metrics. Minecraft, which is owned by Microsoft, stands as the best-selling game of all time, with hundreds of millions of copies sold and downloads around the world. Meanwhile, Roblox saw its average daily active user (DAU) count climb 22% year over year to reach a record 66.1 million, and total engagement hours on the platform rose 23% to hit 14.5 billion.  

Crucially, platforms including Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox have already proven to have strong staying power. Fortnite is actually the youngest of the three, having debuted in 2017. Meanwhile, Minecraft debuted in 2011 and the first version of Roblox was released in 2006. 

Why have some gone morbid on the metaverse?

According to Zitron, "The Metaverse is now headed to the tech industry's graveyard of failed ideas." Much of his pessimistic outlook on the space centers around a critique that Meta Platforms' (META 2.33%) virtual-world projects failed to live up to hype and expectations. The company's Horizon Worlds platform fell short of engagement targets and generally lacked some of the dazzling visuals and features that were present in the video the company used to first demo its metaverse projects. Zitron goes so far as to suggest that Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg may never have had a genuine interest in the space. 

While it's clear that the metaverse has yet to emerge as a major performance driver for the company, there's little indication that the tech giant has given up on its ambitions in the category. In the first-quarter conference call Meta hosted at the end of last month, Zuckerberg commented on the notion that he's abandoned the metaverse in favor of AI: 

A narrative has developed that we're somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say upfront that that's not accurate. We've been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both.

Zuckerberg has indeed indicated that AI has become the company's key near-term growth focus, but he continues to highlight the metaverse as an important long-term growth opportunity. The tech CEO sees AI and the metaverse as complementary technologies, and Meta has continued to pour billions into building out its long-term metaverse ambitions each quarter. 

The metaverse's death has been greatly exaggerated

Adoption for the broader metaverse category could proceed at a somewhat uneven pace in the lead up to huge breakthroughs. Some projects in the space already appear to have failed, and others will likely follow. But the metaverse remains a promising field, and it's likely that some players will score incredible wins in the space. 

Artificial intelligence is rightfully all the rage in tech industry and on Wall Street right now, but excitement surrounding generative AI isn't going to kill the metaverse. In fact, the rise of virtual worlds is probably just getting started.