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Microsoft's latest wave of layoffs, who announced that he was going to eliminate 10,000 jobs this year, Reached out to key teams for his VR and metavers efforts, reports indicate. The company will shut down two projects in these areas, altspacevr and the mixed reality toolkit, potentially affecting microsoft's progress in these areas.
MS VR & Metaverse Teams. Getting hit with layoffs.
The latest round of layoffs announced by Microsoft on Jan. 18, has reportedly hit metaverse and VR (virtual reality) initiatives of the company, potentially affecting progress in these areas. Of the 10,000 jobs that are going to be eliminated this year, Accounting for five percent of Microsoft's global workforce, Teams behind initiatives such as altspacevr and the Blended Reality toolkit are being eliminated as part of this realignment process.
Altspacevr, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2017, has already announced it will sunset its platform on March 10. The platform, that was intended to provide services to facilitate the creation of virtual environments for events involving performers, creators, brands, and businesses, will move towards the mesh, a more work-oriented platform that is built into MS Teams.
The Composite Reality Toolkit, a set of open-source to build user interfaces for the metaverse will also apparently be discontinued, since no new teams have been announced for its development at the time of writing.
Deceleration Metaverse and VR.
Although the company justified these layoffs as a way of aligning its cost structure with revenue and client demand, some think that these redundancies located in the metaverse and VR sector signal the slowdown of the company's advances in this area.
The reported layoffs at Microsoft affect initiatives focused on the consumer metaverse primarily, following the course that Meta has taken by laying off 13% of its workforce, shedding 11,000 jobs.
But microsoft's top executives believe in metaverse and other disruptive technologies, and the advances they will bring in the future. Recently, satya nadella, chief executive officer of the company, said that the sense of presence that metaverse technology can bring is changing the game.
Microsoft is also involved in the creation of the Global Collaboration Village — the metaverse world of the World Economic Forum (WEF) — and has shown interest in investing in AI (artificial intelligence) projects such as Openai, creators of AI bot Chatgpt.
What are your views on the Metavers and Reality Teams layoffs within Microsoft? Tell us about it in the comments below.
