"Metaverse End" or "Metaverse Reorganization"—Reading the Industry Map for 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, the metaverse industry is in the midst of “reorganization” rather than “end.” After the speculative boom of 2021 and the cooling-off in 2022, the metaverse market has reached a complex developmental stage characterized not by superficial decline but by a divergence in performance across different sectors.

The previous surge has faded, but the industry has not disappeared entirely. Rather, some areas are experiencing unexpected growth, while others face severe stagnation. This imbalance is the most significant feature of the metaverse industry in 2025.

Why the Gaming Sector Survives—What Roblox’s 151.5M DAU Indicates

Immersive gaming platforms are the most mature and successful segment within the metaverse industry. Roblox recorded an average of 151.5 million daily active users (a 70% increase year-over-year) in Q3 2025, with quarterly revenue reaching $1.36 billion (a 48% increase YoY). These figures demonstrate that the user-generated content (UGC) model, which integrates gaming and social interaction, still maintains high user retention.

Interestingly, Roblox no longer emphasizes the “metaverse” label. Its corporate narrative has shifted toward frameworks like “global gaming market” and “platform and creator ecosystem,” indicating a strategic pivot.

Fortnite also maintains hundreds of millions of monthly users, but its developer, Epic Games, is taking a different approach. Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney announced in November 2025 a partnership with Unity, aiming to build an open metaverse with interoperability. According to the company, 40% of Fortnite gameplay time is spent on third-party content, effectively incorporating metaverse-like features.

Meanwhile, Minecraft, once considered a metaverse giant, has executed a strategic retreat. Support for VR/MR devices ended after March 2025, clarifying its withdrawal from immersive hardware. This serves as a lesson that even large platforms cannot resist industry trends.

In conclusion, surviving players in the gaming sector are shedding the “metaverse” label to access broader markets, symbolizing a decline in the intrinsic appeal of the metaverse concept itself.

The “Winter” of Metaverse Social—What VRChat’s Growth and Horizon’s Struggles Signify

The metaverse-based virtual social space entered a stagnation phase in 2025. The novelty of social experiences in purely virtual spaces has waned, and the market is now seeking practical use cases.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds continues to struggle. Its monthly active users fell below 200,000, a stark contrast to Facebook’s hundreds of millions, marking a complete failure. Meta itself acknowledged at its 2025 corporate meeting that the platform has not demonstrated sufficient user retention or profitability. Continuing heavy investment is now seen as increasingly unlikely.

Meta’s strategy should shift away from dependence on VR devices. Reports indicate that from late 2024, mobile and web versions were launched, with mobile users quadrupling within a year, but growth remains far from explosive.

In contrast, the veteran VR social platform VRChat has experienced unexpected growth. During the New Year peak in 2025, concurrent users exceeded 130,000, with user numbers expected to increase over 30% from 2024 to 2025. Its survival is attributed to a strong core community and a surge in user-generated content, especially in markets like Japan.

On the other hand, Rec Room, once valued at $3.5 billion, rapidly declined. In August 2025, it announced layoffs of over half its staff, indicating it has hit a growth ceiling. The influx of low-quality mobile content and underwhelming user retention and revenue contributed to its downturn.

In the metaverse social space, investments in AI-generated content are also progressing, with experiments such as AI-driven characters in VR chat rooms and GPT-based personalized virtual space generation. However, it will take time before these innovations significantly impact the market.

XR Hardware Market: “Hot at Both Ends, Cold in the Middle”

The XR hardware market in 2025 shows a clear bifurcation. Investment is concentrated in ultra-high-end and low-cost products, while the mid-tier market remains sparse.

Apple Vision Pro, priced at $3,499 and produced in limited quantities, saw limited sales. CEO Tim Cook positioned it as not a “mass-market product,” targeting early adopters. Nonetheless, Apple continues investing in ecosystem development, with updates to visionOS and enhanced chips.

In the mass-market segment, Meta dominates. The Meta Quest 3 saw strong sales during the 2024 and 2025 holiday seasons. According to IDC, Meta held approximately 60.6% of the global AR/VR headset and smart glasses market share in the first half of 2025.

Sony’s PlayStation VR2 lowered its price to $399.99 in March 2025 to boost sales. This price cut proved effective during the holiday season, with total sales approaching 3 million units by the end of 2025. However, growth remains limited due to its PC VR and console-only constraints.

Another major trend in 2025 is the rapid rise of consumer smart glasses. Meta and Ray-Ban’s collaboration, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses (Gen 2), introduced integrated displays and basic AR functions for the first time. Their appearance resembles ordinary sunglasses, with practical features like photography and AI, gaining popularity among urban youth. IDC reports that global shipments of AR/VR headsets and smart glasses reached 14.3 million units in 2025, a 39.2% increase year-over-year.

At Meta Connect 2025, the integration of generative AI and XR was emphasized. Users can generate virtual scenes and objects via voice commands, indicating that AI+XR will become a new investment focus in 2026. Additionally, the OpenXR standard gained widespread support in 2025, accelerating industry interoperability.

Commercialization of Digital Humans Accelerates—What ZEPETO and Ready Player Me Reveal

The field of digital identities and avatars within the metaverse has entered a commercial phase.

ZEPETO, popular among Gen Z and especially female users, has surpassed 400 million registered users and 20 million monthly active users. In 2025, it launched limited digital apparel collaborations with luxury brands like Gucci and Dior, and hosted virtual fan meetings with K-pop idols. According to NAVER Z, the official data shows that the product line, including ZEPETO, reached 49.4 million monthly active users, recovering post-pandemic.

Ready Player Me (RPM) was acquired by Netflix in late 2025. Since its founding in 2020, having raised about $72 million from investors like a16z, it has served as a compatible 3D avatar creation tool across multiple virtual worlds. Before acquisition, over 6,500 developers used RPM’s SDK. Post-acquisition, Netflix plans to integrate RPM’s technology into its gaming business, enabling users to use unified virtual avatars across various games.

Snapchat is also enhancing Bitmoji and testing generative AI applications, such as launching fashion stores. Meta invests in its own avatar system, introducing more realistic “Codec Avatars” into Quest and social apps.

Why Industry Metaverse Achieves the Most Tangible Results

While consumer metaverse struggles, industry metaverse is steadily delivering results. The industrial metaverse market reached approximately $48.2 billion in 2025, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 20.5% from 2025 to 2032, reaching $600 billion by 2032.

NVIDIA’s Omniverse platform is widely adopted by major manufacturers like Toyota, TSMC, and Foxconn. These companies use Omniverse to build digital twins of factories, optimize production lines, and train AI. Industry software firms such as Ansys, Siemens, and Cadence collaborate with NVIDIA to establish data standards and visualization benchmarks.

According to Siemens, 81% of companies worldwide are already using, testing, or planning to adopt industrial metaverse solutions. Specific achievements include:

• BMW: Reduced new product launch time by 30% through digital twin simulations of new production lines
• Boeing: Nearly 40% reduction in design errors for complex aerospace parts using HoloLens and digital twin technology
• Several US hospitals: Implemented VR therapies (e.g., RelieVRx) to aid patient recovery

Medical professionals believe AR/VR has a positive impact on the industry, and multinational energy companies use VR for hazardous environment training. Logistics firms employ AR glasses for warehouse management. For example, a French nuclear power company reported over 20% reduction in new employee accident rates due to VR training.

The success of industry metaverse lies in delivering tangible ROI rather than mere promotion. However, issues like lack of vendor interoperability, data silos, and security concerns mean many implementations remain at proof-of-concept or small-scale stages.

The Heavy Past and Difficult Revival of Crypto Asset NFTs and Metaverse

Metaverse based on cryptocurrencies and NFTs bears a heavy historical burden. After the bubble burst in 2022–2023, speculative fervor rapidly subsided.

According to DappRadar, in Q3 2025, total NFT transaction volume for metaverse projects was only about $17 million, with Decentraland’s quarterly land sales totaling $416,000 (1,113 transactions). This is a stark contrast to the millions of dollars per land parcel traded in 2021.

Decentraland’s daily active users are below 1,000, with concurrent users in the hundreds or thousands, reaching only tens of thousands during major events. This “ghost town” phenomenon is also seen in The Sandbox.

Project teams are working to maintain communities. Decentraland established a metaverse content fund in 2025, allocating $8.2 million to support events like Art Week and career fairs. The Sandbox partnered with Universal Pictures to launch virtual areas themed around IPs like “The Walking Dead.”

The biggest event of 2025 was the official launch of Yuga Labs’ “Otherside,” a virtual world developed over three years. During its November launch, thousands gathered at the new “Koda Nexus” area on the first day, demonstrating rare popularity in the Web3 metaverse space. Yuga Labs also integrated AI world-generation tools, allowing users to create 3D game scenes through interaction.

However, this entire sector faces trust barriers in the public perception. Overcoming stereotypes such as “asset speculation,” “disconnection from real needs,” and “poor user experience” will be nearly impossible in the short term, making mainstream user trust difficult to attain.

The Future of the Metaverse Industry in 2026

Looking back at 2025, it’s clear that the metaverse industry is in a phase of “reorganization” rather than “end.” The intrinsic appeal of the metaverse concept is waning, but its technologies and philosophies are dispersing and permeating into various fields.

The following trends are expected to shape the future:

Increasing polarization of sectors: Gaming and industrial metaverse will continue to grow, while crypto asset metaverse and social metaverse will shrink.

Shedding the “metaverse” label: surviving companies will drop the “metaverse” tag and focus on more concrete use cases such as gaming, industrial tools, and smart glasses.

Accelerated AI+XR integration: generative AI combined with XR hardware will become a major trend in 2026, attracting new investments and development.

Standardization and interoperability: widespread adoption of OpenXR will improve compatibility across platforms, promoting industry unification.

The understanding that the metaverse is in a phase of “reorganization” rather than “end” will serve as an important guideline for industry participants. Only those companies that focus on genuine needs and value creation amid limited resources will survive, as the era of rigorous selection continues into 2026.