Baidu unveils first metaverse platform – Xi Rang – in China

China’s search engine, Baidu, has unveiled the first metaverse platform in China, called Xi Rang (It means “land of hope” in English). According to a report from South China Morning Post (SCMP), the platform “can be assessed via smartphones, computers or VR goggles, allowing users to create avatars and interact with other players. The media company released a video showing users experiencing the metaverse…see below

The Xi Rang platform enables up to 100,000 online attendees to interact simultaneously in the same space. However users can only access the platform in China.

What exactly is the metaverse? 

Coined from two words Meta (beyond) and Verse (universe), the metaverse is a virtual world, a non-physical world where individuals can interact through the use of diverse virtual technologies. The word first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction book “Snow Crash” where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world.

The word has now become a buzzword in the tech world with many tech companies essentially building their own version of the metaverse. Facebook recently rebranded to Meta and said it is now spending $50 million to persuade people to believe in the concept as it believes its metaverse will shape how we use the internet in the future.

Metaverse in China

With the metaverse hype, China cannot afford to be left behind even though it has been recently clamping down on Internet businesses with companies like Yahoo shutting down and Microsoft’s LinkedIn shutting down. Operating in China has long posed numerous challenges for private companies, as Chinese President Xi Jinping has orchestrated a sweeping regulatory crackdown on the tech, education, gaming, and entertainment industries in recent months that has wiped a huge amount of market value off China’s biggest firms.

Baidu will definitely need to work within the limits of the regulatory regime in China to reap the full benefits of its investments in the metaverse.

However it could easily attract a lot of users in a fairly quick time as the search engine boasts of 607 million monthly active users (MAUs) as at September 2021.

The Xi Rang platform, however, is still in its infancy and according to Ma Jie, a vice president at Baidu, it could take up to six years for a full launch.