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Walmart has gone to Roblox to shop for relevance among younger customers.?

On Monday Walmart?launched ?two ‘immersive experiences’ within what the retailer called the ‘metaverse mega-platform’.?

That description of Roblox is either accurate and inaccurate, depending on whether you’re on board with rebranding online games as metaverses or you think the term should be reserved for truly expansive and interoperable virtual worlds (which don’t exist yet). But there’s no need to get bogged down in semantics here.?

The two immersive experiences are called Walmart Land and Walmart's Universe of Play. Walmart Land is an area dedicated to fashion, beauty and entertainment, while Universe of Play is aimed at younger players and is focused on toys.?

Both destinations feature mini-games that visitors can play and tokens that they can use to buy virtual accessories for their Roblox avatars, and Walmart says it will host a virtual concert in Walmart Land in October.?

At the time of writing, Walmart Land had received around 400,000 visitors, according to the Roblox?website , which feels like neither triumph nor failure (for reference, Roblox has over 52 million daily active users).?

Vans' ?Roblox experience has attracted over 81 million visitors in just under a year, while Nike's, which is?frequently held up as a shining example of the genre, has attracted 21.4 million in the same amount of time (although Nike's CEO told investors in March that it was only at 6.7 million).?

But as Metanomic CEO Theo Priestley?argues ,?Nike put a lot of resources into building and marketing its Roblox experience, and as far as we can tell, Walmart’s effort is not at the same level. The Manicure Challenge mini-game we saw is simplistic in the extreme, and we’re not sure how many people will be awed by a ‘physics-defying Ferris wheel’ in an environment where physics are largely arbitrary.?

It's easy to scoff at 'metaverse' stunts, but in general it's a pretty?sound strategy for brands to try to meet customers where they spend time – they should just be?realistic about whether they’re better off doing so as an advertiser, rather than an attraction.?

If Walmart is serious about using Roblox to foster engagement and community among a new generation of shoppers and not just looking for a quick PR hit, it's got its work cut out.

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