These are not good times for Disney or the Metaverse, the ambitious project that led Facebook to change its name to Meta. We already said it here from the beginning, the Metaverse project was as dazzling as it was complex in many aspects. The appeal of approaches like the one popularized by Ready Player One or, if we go to the origin of the term, by Neal Stephenson in the fast-paced Snow Crash, technologically speaking it is a chimera today, as Intel proposed at the end of 2021.
We were promised, as I was saying, a Ready Player One-like experience, but a year later all that was really on the table were some basic design avatars, that reminded those of the extinct Nintendo Wiiand a handful of applications and spaces that, far from being as lively populated as Second Life in its heyday, were defined by Meta itself in an internal report as «a sad and empty place«. A few days later, such a daring (and empty) bet caused a severe blow to the company’s accounts.
Disney, for its part, is one of the companies that decided to bet on the Metaverse, creating a work unit that had to explore the possibilities of the Metaverse and, of course, look for the fit of its extensive catalog in said space. And I go back to before, this would have been something spectacular, if the Metaverse had been what we were promised. Being able to pretend that we have a lightsaber, travel through space to the rhythm of the Awesome Mixtape or put on Tony Stark’s suit are experiences that, although virtual, would be sensational. If it were possible, sure.
Any resemblance to the Metaverse that Meta and the current reality wanted to sell us is pure coincidence or, more likely, the result of our imagination, and more and more companies have had to assume this painful (for their accounts) reality. Thus, as we can read in The Wall Street Journal, Disney has canceled its plans in the Metaverse and has fired the entire division that you created to work on this project.
As we already told you at the beginning of February, Disney announced layoffs as a result of the drop in the number of Disney+ subscribers, along with poor global economic forecasts. In bad times, big companies don’t hesitate for a minute to pull out the scissors and start cutting back. However, the fact that this movement occurred before more far-reaching movements began in this regard, points out the little confidence that should prevail in the company with respect to the Metaverse.
