REVIEW & COMMENTARY
Ma Xin, Wang Fang
[Purpose/significance] A systematic review and analysis of the current status of Metaverse research in China and abroad is conducive to accurately grasping the direction of Metaverse development, strengthening basic research about Metaverse, and striving for the leading power to construct Metaverses.[Method/Process] Using the PRISMA method, 262 Metaverse thematic papers collected from Web of Science, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Google Scholar, CNKI, WanFang, and Baidu Scholar were employed to organize and answer four research questions on the concept and main features of the Metaverse, core technology and architecture, application industries and cases, and potential effects and empirical evidence.[Result/Conclusion] The results show that:① unlike traditional cognition, the concept of the Metaverse is not ambiguous, but evolves and develops from the individual-level Metaverse to the human-level Metaverse by closely focusing on five core features:virtual, immersive, communion, social, and interactive; ② Metaverses at different levels share a set of technical architecture, in which the core technologies are highly consistent and synergistic, but the overall technical maturity is not high; ③ the application scope of the Metaverse in industries is limited, mainly in tertiary industries, and the cognition and demand for it in secondary and primary industries need to be deepened and expanded; ④ The Metaverse's potential effects are distributed in the five categories of the political, social, economic, technological, and cultural values. Positive effects are unquestionably greater than negative ones, but there are conflicting opinions, and there isn't enough empirical research to back this up. Furthermore, discussing the shortcomings of existing Metaverse research and possible future research directions can provide useful references and insights for further exploration of the Metaverse and related topics.