The immersive digital worlds platform from gaming startup Roblox (RBLX.N) will be made available on PlayStation devices from Sony (6758.T) in October, giving it access to the hundreds of millions of users of the world’s most well-liked gaming consoles.
Following the release of a test version in July, Roblox will also make its software fully accessible on Meta’s (META.O) Quest mixed reality headsets this month. According to a blog post by the firm, that version was downloaded more than a million times in only five days.
According to Manuel Bronstein, chief product officer at Roblox, the expansion is part of a strategy to make Roblox accessible “anywhere users are trying to use it,” including mobile, desktop, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) platforms. This was said to Reuters ahead of the company’s annual developer conference this week.
Bronstein said, “I wonder if we ought to be on every TV.”
One of the most famous gaming platforms for kids, Roblox has 66 million daily users, mostly adolescents. Tech titans like Meta are closely monitoring Roblox to attract the next generation of consumers.
Horizon, a similar “metaverse” service where users may congregate in virtual environments as avatars, has had difficulty gaining traction. A Wall Street Journal story said that as of last year, it had less than 200,000 monthly users.
Although Meta said in February that it planned to offer web and mobile versions shortly without providing a timeframe, Horizon is now exclusively accessible in VR.
Roblox said at its conference that it will launch a world-building chatbot driven by AI before the end of the year.
According to a demo shown to Reuters, developers could use the chatbot to create virtual items and scenarios on demand without coding, and it closely mirrors a technology shown off by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year.
Instead of textual communications, Meta’s technology relied on voice instructions, which it has not yet made public.
Later this year, another brand-new Roblox technology will enable phone conversations between users on mobile and desktop platforms and their Roblox pals, represented by avatars.
The Connect technology records a participant’s body movements and facial emotions using the device’s camera and then displays them via the participant’s avatar.
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