The year is 2022, and nobody will look at your products unless there’s an NFT or the metaverse involved. At least, that’s the thinking over at Samsung HQ. The South Korean company has got an Unpacked looming large this weekend and, wouldn’t you know it, they’ve also got a virtual experience coming.
And it’s not just virtual reality — which we’ve apparently now collectively redefined as the ‘metaverse’. The rest of the best buzzwords from 2021 are present — crypto and blockchain and NFTs, oh my!
Samsung’s reality? Check.
Samsung’s offering viewers the chance to check out Unpacked 2022 in a conventional manner. You know, live streams or turning up in person? But there’s also set to be a virtual edition, held in a place called 837X. In Samsung’s words, this is a “…blockchain-powered virtual space, where you can buy and sell exclusive digital assets, like land and wearables”
The virtual recreation of the company’s New York experience store is hosted by the VR platform Decentraland. Prospective attendees turn up at the event through their browser, so don’t expect much more than just navigating an avatar around a digital store. Unless, that is, you’ve got a crypto wallet on you.
There are two ways to attend your very first metaverse experience. The first is as a guest, where you can roam around and look at all the lovely digital things. But if you happen to have a MetaMask wallet, then you’re eligible to win NFTs (which appear to be wearable, avatars, for the use of), customise your attendee, and collect badges (also NFTs) during your stay. An element of questing is involved when it comes to actually winning something.
But, as with everything else metaverse-adjacent, there’s no reasonable explanation given why attending Unpacked in the metaverse is better. If you’re a fledgling NFT collector, then it might be worthwhile taking the more convoluted route to learning what Samsung has to say this February. Or you could just watch a video stream and get all the same information without setting a rainforest on fire.