What a few months ago was the buzzword, metaversesuddenly it has become something reviled by the entire sector and it seems that everyone is cleaning their hands. Especially Microsoft, which has just closed entire divisions related to this issue. and virtual reality. Is it too soon for that or, failing that, was it all a real hoax?
Microsoft has just laid off 10,000 employees, something that has become common among Big Tech companies that have shed a good part of their workforce. In any case, those in Redmond are not the most affected in terms of worker quota, since Meta has lost 11% of its human resources and Amazon has fired 18,000 workers. Rather, what is important here is that products and services have been affected by said decision. And indeed it appears that the divisions behind projects like HoloLens, AltSpaceVR, and the Mixed Reality Tool Kit have been extinguished forever.
A temporary goodbye from Microsoft to the Metaverse or definitive?
One of the projects in which Microsoft gave more strength in past years was the Hololens, professional augmented reality glasses based on the ability to create three-dimensional holograms in the eyes of the user with the ability to blend with the real environment. However, it was not successful among ordinary users and from Redmond they decided to turn it into a military product through the United States Army, causing the definitive end of Microsoft glasses.
The other bad news is the end of the Mixed Reality Tool Kit, a series of tools designed to generate virtual environments for users of HMD units or VR headsets such as Microsoft HoloLens 2, Meta Quest in its different versions and Lenovo ThinkReality A3, all of which use Qualcomm processors to run. At least Microsoft has made the source code fully available so that both the community and third-party companies can benefit from the work done so far.
Of course, the Microsoft project that most closely relates the Metaverse to virtual reality is AltSpaceVR, whose team would have dissolved and would be among those fired. In any case, it wouldn’t be bad news, but a way to turn the tables and start from scratch since there is a new project in Redmond under the name of Microsoft Mesh.
Not seen as a safe bet in Redmond
A metaverse is nothing more than a three-dimensional virtual environment, very similar to that of a video game, but designed for a user to interact with it as a source of information. The concept is an evolution of the internet that would be accessed through a virtual reality headset. Unfortunately, current technology is too green to be able to offer a solution of this type and for the moment it is something far removed in time.
So it is normal that companies like Microsoft have decided for the moment to focus their efforts on products and services closer in time and leave the Metaverse for when the time comes. Yes, the end turns out to be the future, since in these things you never know. As for Virtual Reality, we don’t need to tell you that it has never entered its plans seriously, not even in the Xbox division.
