❝ « If people want a Prada product, they prefer going to a Prada store… It’s the experience they get… which justifies the high price tag. We started thinking about how we could create a richer experience on the website, one that goes beyond just a transaction. » ❞

— Romain Japy, Fabl’style

Executive Summary

In the early days of the Metaverse (2020–2023), companies like Obsess and Emperia defined the market. They provided the « Right Tech for the Time »—lightweight WebGL solutions that ran on any device during the 5G era.

However, as Romain Japy (Founder of The New Face) explained in his recent interview with Fabl’style, the industry is shifting. Luxury consumers are demanding digital experiences that match the physical store’s « justification of the high price tag. » WebGL can no longer deliver this.

This analysis explores why the industry is moving toward Pixel Streaming, and how The New Face has engineered a proprietary stack that makes « PS5-Quality » commerce cheaper and more scalable than the legacy players.

1. The « Gen 1.0 » Era: Why Obsess and Emperia Won (Yesterday)

To understand the shift, we must acknowledge the foundation. Obsess and Emperia built their empires on WebGL (using libraries like Three.js or Babylon.js).

The Tech Stack: Client-Side Rendering.

How it works: The browser downloads 3D assets and uses the user’s smartphone or laptop GPU to render them.

Why it was right for 2021:

• Low Bandwidth: It worked reasonably well on slower internet connections.
• Low Cost: Once the assets were built, hosting was cheap because the heavy lifting was done by the user’s device, not a server.

The « Luxury » Ceiling:

Because WebGL relies on the consumer’s device, the graphics must be downgraded. Lighting is « baked » (painted on), reflections are fake, and geometry is low-poly.

Result: A digital store that looks like a mobile game from 2014—functional, but rarely « Premium. »

2. The « Gen 2.0 » Era: Why The New Face is Winning (Today)

The New Face bet on a different future: Unreal Engine 5 + Pixel Streaming.

The Tech Stack: Server-Side Rendering.

How it works: The experience is rendered on powerful Cloud GPUs (using Lumen and Nanite) and streamed to the user as an interactive video feed.

Why it is the Game Changer:

As Japy noted in Fabl’style, the goal is to « engage in e-commerce without compromising their brand’s integrity. » Pixel Streaming achieves this by decoupling quality from the user’s hardware. A user with an iPhone 8 sees the same ray-traced diamonds, velvet textures, and atmospheric lighting as a user with a $4,000 gaming PC.

3. Breaking the Barriers: Cost & Scale

Historically, brands stuck with Gen 1.0 because Pixel Streaming was considered « Too Expensive. »

The New Face has dismantled these barriers.

The Cost Disruption ($0.03/min)

Competitors typically charge $0.15/min for streaming. By owning our infrastructure and optimizing our proprietary C++ wrapper, The New Face has driven costs down to **$0.03/min**.

• Impact: Premium streaming is now cost-competitive with standard hosting.

The Scale Disruption (No CCU Limits)

Legacy streaming solutions had queues.

• Impact: The New Face’s auto-scaling architecture enables Zero CCU Limits, allowing for massive global drops without crashing.

Conclusion: The Torch Has Passed

Obsess and Emperia digitized retail. They were the necessary first step.

But for luxury brands, « sufficient » is not enough. They require « sublime. » As Romain Japy puts it, we are moving from a transaction-based web to an experience-based web.

The New Face represents the maturation of the immersive industry. By combining the visual power of Unreal Engine 5 with a disruptive pricing model, we have moved the benchmark from « Virtual Store » to « Digital Flagship. »