Metaverse – Little by little it is revealing which departments are affected by the layoffs at Microsoft, and things are not looking good for fans of mixed and augmented reality.
Meta made the Metaverse fashionable , but now the new mantra is called artificial intelligence. Microsoft continues to lay off people , and it seems to have affected the entire industry -focused section of its metaverse , following the failure of Hololens . About 100 employees.
The Metaverse is still something too vague and unreal, but artificial intelligence is very present, it has penetrated much more among people, and it can be even more lucrative. Which in the end is what it’s all about…
And although the term was put in fashion by Meta, the truth is that Microsoft had been marketing its own Metaverse for some time , to companies like Coca Cola and Mercedes-Benz .
But the backtracking by the US Army , which ultimately rejected a $400 million purchase of tens of thousands of Hololens mixed-reality headsets it already had on hand, has been a reality check for Microsoft.
Microsoft cancels the metaverse
A few weeks ago Satya Nadella’s company announced the layoff of 10,000 employees . Many of them worked in mixed reality . He fired the entire team at Windows Mixed Realty Tools, and shut down AltSpaceVR, his virtual reality.
Now, according to The Information , a new wave of layoffs has swept over the Industrial Metaverse team , barely 4 months after it was formed.
Microsoft created the Industrial Metaverse Core division last October , with the goal of developing Metaverse projects for companies and industrial processes . It was going to focus on creating software to integrate virtual and mixed reality into factories and assembly and supply chains.
Now, with the supposed closure of this division just 4 months after going live, Microsoft practically slams the door on the metaverse.
Its new toy is called artificial intelligence , and it has plunged into a race to integrate it into all of its services. It is already used by Bing and Office , and surely we will see it in the rest very soon.
With the layoff of the Industrial Metaverse team , Microsoft seems to be turning its back on mixed reality . Meta is getting more and more lonely, and we don’t know if that’s good or bad for her.
