Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Comment of the Week
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Above: Nintendo's consumer VR launch in 1994 Is the market for VR headsets small and active usage apparently low (especially among Gen Z) because virtual reality is still in "early days"? Reader Nadeja thinks otherwise: I don't think we are in the early days of VR. The earliest HMD were made in the 1960s. NASA…
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Responding to our question on how many active users on the Quest VR headset there are, a reader points us to a recent market survey which suggests that use is quite tiny, especially among Gen Z: Piper Sandler completes 43rd semi-annual Generation Z survey of 7,100 U.S. teens… While 26% of teens own a VR…
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Many interesting comments in last week's post about Philip Rosedale's desire to bring back in-world, collaborative creation as the gold standard, including this one by Martin K., going into detail about how many resources it has for that feature. Have a look at this page, it links to Discord servers of dozens of classes that…
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Very good point from reader "Alelangel Verenova", responding to my survey on interest in Second Life's new Premium+ account offering, which will costs up to $25 USD a month: Here in Latin America there will be a major NO answer, basically because the exchange to our local money. It's an important amount per month, even…
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Lots of good reader feedback around the just-announced Premium Plus offering for Second Life. According to Luther Weymann, getting a Premium Plus in his specific scenario would not be a very good deal: I have a free account.I have a 2048 store in a private region for monthly rent.I have product development that I upload…
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Smart thoughts from reader and tech exec veteran Luther Weymann, reflecting on the questions of AI sentience brought up by a recent Washington Post story on the Google developer who believes the company's chat bot has already achieved it: Artificial intelligence programs running on machines use databases on computer systems to receive instruction for action…
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Valid question from reader "Mitch", responding to my post last week pointing out the tiny weekly active users of blockchain-based metaverse platforms: What qualifies an active weekly user in this chart? The Sandbox is still in Alpha. I joined to check it out, I thought it had potential, and then I uninstalled it and I'm…
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Longtime reader Martin K. has a pretty excellent rant responding to Meta's vision for the Metaverse from its global exec Nick Clegg. And while I might recommend taking some of it with some dashes of sodium, Martin hits pretty hard: Maybe the most interesting aspects of that essay are the things that Meta is doing…
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Reader Joey1058 has a fair point about my comparing the oranges of Linden Dollars to the apples of Bitcoin: The US designated crypto as a commodity. So asking to use BTC as a currency is like asking to use gold and silver as an everyday currency again. The L$ is an inworld currency, and has…
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Important comment from Brazil-based reader "Moanna", responding to my economics survey which suggests that the cost of entrance into the Second Life economy has become so high, it's difficult for newcomers to break in. For people in developing nations like hers, those costs are far higher than what they'd be for creators based in the…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 