Virtual Platforms > Today, the most popular virtual platforms | on product

Virtual Platforms
> Today, the most popular virtual platforms are Roblox and Minecraft [and] Grand Theft Auto Online and Fortnite Creative Mode. (...) The ability to richly customize items and then sell or trade them does not mean a game is a platform. (...) According to [Bill Gates], a “platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it.” Tim Sweeney argues “something is a platform when the majority of content people spend time with is created by others.”
> Hong Kong International Airport was famously designed in Unity. (...) Unity could not only render a not-yet-real environment, but realistically stress-test it for fire, a flood, a power outage, backed-up runway, and for the flow of humans in an emergency. (...) It becomes possible to interconnect previously independent simulations. (...) What’s key to Omniverse is that it can do this irrespective of the file formats. (...) In other words, everything doesn’t have to be on Unity, or Unreal, or AutoCAD.

Interchange Tools & Standards
> Today’s internet was built through a variety of consortiums and informal working groups. (...) Anyone with an internet connection could build a website in minutes and at no cost using pure HTML, and even faster using a platform like GeoCities. (…) And a single version of this site was (or at least could be) accessed by every device, browser, and user connected to the internet.
> It’s not hard to imagine how the internet might differ if it had been created by [AT&T or AOL]. (...) Fortnite needs to use Microsoft’s DirectX for Xbox, and Sony’s GNMX for PlayStation, Nvidia’s NVM for Nintendo Switch, and Apple’s Metal for iOS. (...) [These] challenges listed above are at risk of becoming harder, or worse, in the Metaverse era.
> Epic Games unveiled Epic Online Services (EOS), (...) ‘Fortnite live services in a box’. (...) Developers can plug directly into Discord. (...) But, historically, the majority of development tends to take place on standards that the leading platforms support. (...) And today’s leaders know this. Which is why they are spending billions of dollars funding independent creators, buying numerous game developers and platforms. (...) Just as you can’t easily import all your Instagram photos and likes into Twitter or TikTok or Snapchat.