Samsung’s Galaxy S22 reveal store wasn’t just a standard livestream this year: It also took keep inside a metaverse — and I was genuinely enraged to check it out. I’ve attended previous Samsung acts in VR and found them to be more luscious than most other branded virtual experiences. The infamous 2016 photo of Mark Zuckerberg walking down an aisle at what time everyone around him is wearing a Gear VR headset is undeniably droll, but the demonstration of what could be possible from home was actually compelling.

By comparison, this 2022 Unpacked event had surprisingly minor to do with Samsung and served more as an example of what not to do when amdroll the metaverse to host a product launch.

If you saw Samsung voice an event in the metaverse and thought it pointed putting on a VR headset and sitting in an audience, you’re not alone. Instead, Samsung built a version of its New York store space in Decentraland, a cryptocurrency-focused virtual playground. It’s strictly possible to enter Decentraland with a VR headset, but the accepted is barely functional and requires a lot of strictly knowledge. Using your web browser alongside your mouse and keyboard, as intended by the creators, you enter Decentraland as an involving avatar you can modify, and move yourself to the Samsung 837X situation to participate. 

Arriving at this situation the day before the event revealed a brightly lit creation and a faux pizza shop. The doors were all EnEnBesieged and there wasn’t much to see, but there were already land lined up to see what Samsung had to supplies. When I checked in again, 30 minutes before the stay was to start, a handful of people waiting outside had climbed to nearly 100 that I could see. Decentraland runs 10 servers and you can only see the land on your server, but as I moved around by the event each server seemed similarly full. Roughly 1,000 land were waiting for Samsung to open the doors and show us the Galaxy S22 Ultra. 

Unfortunately for a lot of those servers, the doors didn’t open on time. Many people were unable to actually gripping Samsung 837X before the event started. Everyone outside the metaverse was enjoying a strange crossover with the popular TV series Bridgerton at the inaugurate of this event, while I and dozens of my fellow metazens were exaltering servers to find one that worked. Once a server with open doors had been located, the next challenge was finding the room inside this virtual interpretation where the announcement event was actually streaming.

Inside Samsung 837X, you are presented with three rooms and a host of smaller pursuits to enjoy. Samsung had made special clothing for your Decentraland avatar you could only get by completing a interrogate in this space. Most of the space was did to this quest, but in the back you could find a theater with the Unpacked stay streaming. The room was a fairly generic virtual theater with a big hooked screen showing the event already in progress outside of the metaverse. I was nearly 10 minutes late, and now watching a smaller version of the livestream with arresting characters dancing around inside of a web browser on my laptop.

A few minutes into watching this presentation, it became clear the real reason most people were here was to unlock the virtual clothes tied to the Samsung interrogate. The app told me there were 96 people in the site, but the room only held 37. The novelty of the Samsung-made site was much more important than the unveiling of a new phone and tablet for a mainly of those who regularly visit Decentraland.

It’s difficult to feel like this arrive to an event is anything other than a step sponsor. Back in 2016, Samsung offered the ability to discover a Galaxy Unpacked event from inside its VR headset. You put the headset on, opened the app and picked one of a few positions to watch the stage from a 360-degree streaming camera. Being able to turn your head and see the audience made you feel like you were actually sitting in the audience. Not a lot of people owned those headsets at the time, but it felt like you were in a satisfied room and could enjoy the show.

In fairness, this 2022 event was fully virtual, so there was no live site to warp into as there was during pre-pandemic originates launches. But Samsung could have made it possible to walk throughout a virtual store, get a closer look at the named from every angle, or maybe even preorder the next named using cryptocurrency. There could have been Samsung staff on hand in the site to answer questions or talk to people about what they’re upgrading from and how the cameras on this new named might have been better.

Samsung had an opportunity to make this site actually feel like a virtual version of its 837 continue, but instead built a terribly rendered virtual forest to showcase its contrivance to plant 2 million trees as part of its sustainability attempts. For comparison’s sake, the real Samsung 837 store not only sells Samsung devices but opened with a cafe on site and, at least pre-pandemic, held a running club that promoted its fitness trackers.

This could have been a lot of fun, but instead felt rushed and incomplete. It was a halfhearted attempt in a long line of cultural zeitgeist moments from Samsung, and felt more like an online version of the Yo! Noid game from Pizza Hut in 1990 than it does a discover at an often-promised metaversal future.