The first time we heard the words “Metaverse” and “Japan” used in the same sentence was last October, when Japan PM Fumio Kishida announced a plan for the country to invest into a new era of digital transformation, based on NFT and the Web 3.0, the third generation of the World Wide Web.
The Metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual space, a digital representation of the real world, where we are able to meet people, talk, make purchases, play games, and do almost any real-word interaction, but digitally. Hopes in the Metaverse are so high that some have defined it “The future of the internet”.
Since last autumn, Japan has decided to jump on the Metaverse boat. First, with the Government’s announcement to promote efforts to expand the use of Web 3.0 services, and now, on 27th February, with an agreement between 10 major Japanese tech companies, including Mitsubishi and Fujitsu, to build a Japanese Metaverse Economic Zone. “Ryugukoku” is the name (TBD), and it will serve as an Open Metaverse Infrastructure, for marketing, insurance, payments, and services. This Ryugukoku infrastructure will be created from a Role-Play Game perspective, based on the concept of Hajime Tabata, game creator, and advisor for the Japanese Government’s Digital Agency.
At the moment, the Metaverse is still in a developmental stage, bus it is expected to grow a lot, and also very quickly. According to Bloomberg, the Metaverse is predicted to be worth 824.53 billion USD by 2030. If the Metaverse will actually prove to be the future of the internet, and if Japan will be able to exploit its potential to the fullest, this can be a very precious chance to make a huge step into a new digital era, and to fuel a giant boost for the Japanese economy.
