Nifty News: Chinese companies to offer World Cup metaverse viewings, X2Y2 looks back on royalties and more

In early November, the Chinese government laid out an ambitious plan to boost the country's virtual reality industry, and now it looks like local tech companies use the World Cup to test their products.

New Chinese companies are betting on 'metaverse'-like experiments for the FIFA World Cup

Tech companies based in China are reportedly working on technology that would allow Chinese soccer fans to watch the FIFA World Cup in the metaverse.

These efforts are part of a five-year plan released by the Chinese government in early November to boost the capabilities and development of the local virtual reality (VR) industry.

Video streaming platform Migu is one of six Chinese companies to have secured the rights to broadcast the World Cup and plans to create a "Metaverse-like" space accessible via VR headsets for users can watch a live broadcast of the game, according to a Nov. 20 report by state media Global Times.

ByteDance, owner of TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, has been awarded the rights to broadcast the competition, with ByteDance's VR headset subsidiary Pico offering live streams of the World Cup, with the ability to users to create and spend time in "digital rooms". ” to watch the game together.

The World Cup is apparently being used by China's fledgling virtual reality industry as a test bed for technology. The country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, along with four other agencies, launched an ambitious industrial plan on November 1.

The five-year plan from 2022 to 2026 indicates that China wants to strengthen its virtual reality industry and ship more than 25 million units at $48.56 billion, although the plan does not specify whether its unit goal is annual or cumulative over the life of the plan.

The announced plans do not mention whether the metaverse will use blockchain technology, such as that posed by the city of Wuhan,...