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And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much lat
by saurik 4y ago
And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much later) photograph, which allowed people to build not only deep stories but rich worlds that have caused entire generations of people to enter what amounts to a shared hallucination (maybe more reminiscent of Vurt than Snow Crash). If only there were some way to use networked computers to allow users to navigate a world written by such authors... imagine how egalitarian that could be, without the large production budgets of 3D modelling and graphic artists enforcing large barriers to entry for aspiring contributors! Alas, no such future could ever be possible for The Metaverse--and it is almost ridiculous to imagine such--as the birth of The Internet in the same year as Nintendo invented the modern computer has guaranteed that no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything.
- DennisP 4y agoAnd yet here we are on this site, typing and reading text, while Amazon has sold almost half a billion books on kindle alone. https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlimited-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlim...
- Scalene2 4y agoSo that means that Amazon has sold a kindle book to at absolute best, less than 1 in 16 people.
- HWR_14 4y ago1 in 16 seems like really high market penetration for a device that (practically) requires special-purpose hardware and whose offerings are primarily in English. Meta gives away not just it's platforms, but in many countries the data that those platforms need. In some cases it's the only zero-rated app. And they have gotten maybe 6 in 16 people to make accounts.
- bombcar 4y agoI wonder what percentage of kindle book purchases are by people with no kindle. iPhone reader works well enough.
- DennisP 4y agoMany fewer than that, since people will buy more than one book. Number of kindles sold is between 20 million and 90 million (same source). Meanwhile the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have each sold about 10 million: https://gamerant.com/ps5-xbox-series-xs-estimated-sales-close/ https://gamerant.com/ps5-xbox-series-xs-estimated-sales-clos... But those are fairly new, so take the last generation. The PS4 sold about 100 million, and Xbox One about 50 million: https://www.theshortcut.com/p/how-many-xbox-one-consoles-microsoft-sold https://www.theshortcut.com/p/how-many-xbox-one-consoles-mic... So the leading game consoles outpace the leading ebook reader, but not by all that much. There are other gaming platforms, but there are also other reading platforms. Some people read kindle books on their phones, kindle books are 72% of the ebook market, and ebooks overall are a third of the book market.
- saurik 4y agoI know, right? And yet, clearly the World Wide Web isn't already The Metaverse because NO ONE--certainly not me--would ever spend their entire day reading ;P.
- NavinF 4y ago> no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything ~825 million printed books were sold in 2021. Reading is such a common pastime that people just don't talk about it. It's also not a particularly social activity unlike most video games so most people won't bring it up unless they read a very popular book that you might be aware of.