Microsoft, the latest IT behemoth to go down on its metaverse plans, let go of its roughly 100-person industrial metaverse team. The team was focused on developing metaverse capabilities for industrial environments.
According to The Information, which cited a source with “direct knowledge of the matter,” the business said that it was disbanding its industrial metaverse team, which had only been operating for around four months.
The decision by Microsoft to close down the Metaverse team is particularly surprising, considering the company’s passion for the sector. It has spent years developing the mixed reality HoloLens gadget, although it is unclear if it will be a commercial success.
Company executives have also discussed the sector’s importance as we move toward a more digital environment. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself has talked about the potential advantages of the metaverse, much like Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has repeatedly emphasized the potential of the technology in the workplace.
Microsoft Backs off with its metaverse plans
According to The Information, this particular metaverse team was known as the “Industrial Metaverse Core,” and its main objective was to create user interfaces for running control systems in electrical power plants, robots, and transportation networks.
People believed Microsoft’s strategy to leverage the metaverse to liven up fairly unglamorous applications in factories and other industrial settings was starting to take shape when the team was founded a few months ago. With the recent news, however, that no longer seems to be the case.
Other businesses have likewise toned down their metaverse-related aspirations. Meta announced the closure of Crayta, which it acquired less than two years ago. A popular metaverse game in its ecosystem, Echo VR, is also being discontinued by the business.
This happened as a number of IT and cryptocurrency juggernauts continued to lay off workers as a result of the global crypto market collapse and prevailing economic uncertainty. Microsoft revealed plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of larger cost-cutting efforts in January 2023, making it the latest tech corporation to significantly decrease its workforce due to rising economic instability.
Microsoft’s decision to disband its industrial metaverse team, however, may signal a change in the organization’s objectives and a drop in its metaverse aspirations.
