The so-called Metaverse is coming, according to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. He told GamesBeat in a new interview that he believes that, thanks to advancements to AR and VR, along with local processing power and distributed processing through the cloud, a legitimate, Ready Player One-like Metaverse might be here before you know it.

"Think back to the '70s and early '80s, people like Ted Nelson were articulating a vision for the meta-verse. Alan Kay, who was at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and then became chief scientist at Atari, had this project called Vivarium in the early 1980s that was the beginnings of the idea of a living, breathing simulation where you would have both the ability of user-generated content and professionally produced content, and that you would have this extremely rich simulation experience that you could live and play and potentially even work," Kotick explained.

For Kotick, he believes one of the most important aspects of the Metaverse will be the "continuous social connection" that it could deliver. To get there, advancements to AR and VR over the next decade, along with other growth in processing power, will allow for a genuine Metaverse to come about.