Big fish in the Metaverse (part 2) : Microsoft

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Always frustrated

2 years ago

Microsoft's own meta version is called Microsoft Mesh. In contrast to the meta-version of Facebook, Mesh can be described not as VR but as MR, i.e. a mixed reality that visually combines reality and the virtual world, with objects from the two worlds coexisting.

The technology promises that the user’s avatar can be projected in a real-world environment, roughly in the form of a hologram, a feature called Holoportation. Of course, this also requires glasses that run under the name Microsoft HoloLens and start at $ 3,500 , so price adaptation may be an obstacle for the time being. By the way, the Mesh application itself is currently only available at a limited preview level.

Last November, Microsoft announced the next stop for Mesh at an event called Ignite 2021, when it was announced that Mesh would be integrated with the Microsoft Teams office application. The video below shows what a meeting within Teams, for example, will look like in the future - which is otherwise eerily similar to Meta’s Horizon.

The battle between the two technology giants is also reflected in the fact that Microsoft's metaversion team has lost about 100 people in the past year, many of them to Meta, according to the software company's former employees and online job profiles.

Competitors have grabbed people skilled in developing HoloLens, sometimes offering double their previous salary, former Microsoft employees said. The LinkedIn profile of more than 70 former employees of the HoloLens team shows that they have left Microsoft in the past year, with more than 40 of them joining Meta.

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a leader in game development and publishing of interactive entertainment content. The acquisition will accelerate the growth of Microsoft's gaming business in the mobile, PC, console and cloud-based areas, as well as provide building blocks for the metaverse, the announcement said. With the completion of the transaction, Microsoft will become the third largest gaming company in the world in terms of revenue behind Tencent and Sony. The planned acquisition includes iconic franchises from Activision, Blizzard and King studios such as Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty and Candy Crush, as well as global eSport activities through Major League Gaming . The company has studios worldwide with nearly 10,000 employees.

Microsoft's announcement may be related to the fact that Microsoft is also working hard to develop a metaverse-like online space for its users, starting with a virtual environment in the workplace