Companies are investing millions in Metaverse real estate

A number of companies are reportedly investing millions of dollars in virtual land in the metaverse.

A new CNBC report details that since Facebook announced that it would be making the move towards the metaverse, prices of virtual reality plots have shot up by 500 per cent in the last few months.

According to the report, the Toronto-based company Tokens.com, has dropped $2.5million USD (£1.84million GBP) on a patch of virtual land in Decentraland – a metaverse based around crypto with its own currency.

“The metaverse is the next iteration of social media,” said Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com, which invests in NFTs and metaverse real estate. “You can go to a carnival, you can go to a music concert, you can go to a museum.”

Meanwhile, another virtual real estate development company, Republic Realm, also spent $4.3million USD (£3.1million GBP) buying a plot of land in Atari’s The Sandbox metaverse.

The metaverse refers to 3D virtual worlds based on the idea of a new way of social interaction. In December, Xbox chief Phil Spencer spoke on the future of the metaverse, saying that it needs to be player-focused rather than company-focused. “Like, why is this metaverse that a lot of people are focusing on, why is it better for players? Why is it better for creators?” Spencer said.

Elsewhere, Voiceverse NFT, the firm voice actor Troy Baker recently announced he would be partnering with, has admitted to taking work from another service.

Voiceverse was found to have been using its tech for the voice of a cartoon character, but it was actually taken from 15.ai – a non-commercial text-to-speech service. The NFT firm later apologised for taking the voice work saying, “We are extremely sorry about this… We will make sure this never happens again.”