Unreal estate: Metaverse, extended reality and the future of our physical world
Mostly confined to cyberpunk and tech forums prior to 2021, the ‘metaverse’ has since experienced breakout attention and entered the common vernacular.
Boasting a growing suite of extended reality hardware, game-like virtual worlds, a whole new asset class and the attention of the world’s most influential billionaires, the metaverse looks like more than a passing fad.
Will it achieve its promise of a fairer, more efficient and immersive experience of the internet or simply replicate the business-as-usual we have come to learn from big tech? What will all of this mean for the real estate sector which has been defined through the provision of physical space?