PlayStation inventor thinks Metaverse is pointless and so does Elon Musk

Is the Metaverse the future of technology? With each passing day, the people who made the tech industry what it is today seem to have a different take on this question. The latest contribution comes from the inventor of the PlayStation, who is definitely not a fan of the Metaverse.

Ken Kutaragi is known as the father of PlayStation. He was head of Sony’s games department during the design and development of the game console. At the time he was developing the PlayStation, he was antagonized by many Sony executives who thought computer gaming was a fad. But he prevailed, and today Sony is the largest games producer in the world, which made around 25 billion dollars from the sale of its consoles in 2020.

While Kutaragi pioneered this technological breakthrough, he sees no future in another . Speaking to Bloomberg, he called the metaverse pointless because it separates more than it brings together, which he says defeats the purpose of a new technology.

Elon Musk Agrees: Metaverse Is Pointless

71-year-old Kutaragi doesn’t want to put on a virtual reality headset to experience a metaverse. He says people would prefer technology to fit into existing reality.

“Being in the real world is very important, but the Metaverse is about creating a pseudo-reality in the virtual world and I don’t see the point in that.”

Technology has made great strides in merging the physical world with the virtual world through Augmented Reality (AR). Games like Pokémon Go have become mega-successes because they merge the virtual world with the physical world and are more immersive than most games that can only be experienced virtually.

However, the metaverse is purely virtual. As it stands, users will need virtual reality headsets to experience it, and Kutaragi doesn’t think that will catch on.

“You’d rather be a polished avatar than the real you? This is basically no different than anonymous message board sites. Headsets would isolate you from the real world and I disagree with that. Headsets are just annoying.”

Elon Musk, Bitcoin enthusiast, Mars colonization visionary, and Tesla boss, agrees with Kutaragi, which is not surprising. Musk has never been a fan of the metaverse, although he otherwise supports future technologies. Musk predicts a world where electric vehicles have taken hold, and he has bet his company, Tesla, is now worth $1 trillion. During his time at PayPal, he also bet that online payments would explode – a bet that paid off massively.
However, he doesn’t believe in the Metaverse at all.