By Leonard BlairChief Reporter Thursday, February 08, 2024

Despite raising significant interest during the coronavirus pandemic, which created a buzz big enough to question whether it could replace megachurches, excitement for the metaverse appears to have been hit as about 90% of churches gravitated toward less expensive and more accessible online engagement. .

In its recently published “State of the Church Technology 2024“study, Pushpay, the leading provider of payment and engagement solutions for the faith and non-profit sectors, found that only 5% of 2,200 church employees responsible for purchasing technology for their churches said in a survey conducted in October 2023 that they currently do ministry.in the metaverse.

The findings come after a 2023 Pushpay report found that 8% of churches offered services in the metaverse, and 25% of churches said their ministries would use the metaverse for ministry in the next 12 months.

“What's more, the [number] of leaders considering incorporating it within the next twelve months fell by 32%. This avalanche in popularity is probably related to public perception,” researchers stated.

“While metaverse and VR technology have been around for years, Facebook's rebrand to 'Meta' and their new metaverse were heavily promoted in late 2021 and continued to make headlines through 2022. Today, the publicity and the general public's enthusiasm for these phenomena decreased considerably,” the report states.

“Tangently, the metaverse inherently has significant barriers to entry. Most VR headsets are expensive investments for individuals, and they require users to learn an entirely new technology platform. Combined with the decline in press coverage, the metaverse and VR have not reached critical mass. of adoption into the church community, and as such have lost much of their former lustre.”

Another accessible factor that could have influenced churches in the metaverse was Microsoft's decision to shut down AltspaceVR in March 2023.

AltspaceVR, launched in 2013, was one of the first social VR platforms that allowed users to meet and interact in the virtual space in a user-friendly way, according to Emory Craiga consultant specializing in VR.

“It was notable for its ease of use, availability in a wide variety of headsets, and the option to use it on flat screens – which alleviated some of the XR's accessibility issues. And it was home to some incredibly creative moments where Reggie Watts and others made some of their early virtual performances,” Craig wrote.

He noted that aside from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's long-term commitment to investing in the metaverse, most developers in the metaverse still haven't figured out how to monetize it right now.

“Despite all the hype surrounding the concept of the metaverse, no one is doing it out of the goodness of their heart. The billions that Meta is losing is part of their long-term game to shift their addiction away from social media. But until now, no one has come up with a way to monetize social virtual reality experiences and make them profitable,” Craig wrote.

“That's in stark contrast to our social media, which have become goldmines of revenue (at the expense of our privacy). You can sell ads in virtual environments, but that was a technical challenge, and it drew resistance from users.”

In its fourth-quarter earnings report last Thursday, Meta reported that its Reality Labs unit recorded an operating loss of $4.65 billion for the period, CNBC reports Since the end of 2020, Meta's metaverse division has lost more than $42 billion, but the company is committed to the development of the platform.

“We expect operating losses to increase significantly year over year due to our continued product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to expand our ecosystem,” the company said in its earnings statement.

Che'von Lewis, a representative of social media giant Facebook, a subsidiary of Meta, previously described the metaverse as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who are not in the same physical space as you.”

“We see the metaverse as the next evolution in social technologies and the successor to the mobile internet,” Lewis said. “It will feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions, or projected into the physical world – and seamlessly stitched together so you can easily jump from one thing to another.”

In the metaverse, Lewis said, people can work, play, learn, shop, create and hang out with their friends, among other things.

“The metaverse is not a single product that one company can build alone,” Lewis said. “And it won't be built overnight. Many of these products will only be fully realized in the next 10 to 15 years.”

To support access to the metaverse, Meta has invested in its Quest family of VR headsets. According to CNBC, sales of VR and AR headsets will drop nearly 40% in 2023.

Last Friday, Apple released its first VR headset called the Apple Vision Prowhich retails for $3,500 and is much more expensive than Meta's Quest 3 VR, which can sell for $500.