Less than two years after being heralded with great fanfare as the future of technology and entertainment… Is the metaverse mortally wounded? In recent weeks, large companies such as Disney, Microsoft or Tencent have announced that they are leaving this expensive virtual adventure.
When it burst onto the scene in October 2021, the metaverse was billed as the next great technological revolution—in fact, Mark Zuckerberg even rebranded Facebook as Meta. The idea was sold as an online 3D universe that would integrate various virtual spaces and allow its users to interact, trade, work, meet, play and even socialize in it.
After this hype, Microsoft, NVidia, Google, Disney, Unity Technology, Roblox Corporation, Amazon, Animoca Brands, Epic Games, Decentraland, and even Binance all fought to get a piece of this new technology.
But so far, the metaverse's technology is failing, largely due to its cost. Many tech experts argue that the concept has never been simplified for mass adoption.
“The metaverse hype is over. The real problem has been its cost. It is not inclusive and both the software and the gadgets are too expensive”, explained technology expert Egline Samoei to the Quartz portal. "People keep googling the meaning of the metaverse. It doesn't meet the needs of a lot of people," adds company founder Brand Moran.
Mark Zuckerberg's company, which was the great forerunner of this idea, investing up to 36,000 million dollars in it, has already begun to distance itself from the metaverse. In fact, Meta will now focus on cutting costs and streamlining projects.
The company's value has taken a nosedive since it bet on the metaverse. In this sense, the company has already cut 11,000 jobs in order to keep this project afloat, but this has not worked either. Zuckerberg plans to eliminate several thousand more jobs and will focus his company's activity on other sectors, such as artificial intelligence.
The Mickey Mouse company has decided to eliminate the division dedicated to the development of this experience and has also announced that it will lay off some 7,000 employees dedicated to this project, as published by The Wall Street Journal.
The objective of this division was to better integrate the public into the Disney universe through a narrative intertwined with virtual reality, but it has finally scrapped the idea after not finding a specific direction for the project.
Other large companies in the technology sector, such as Microsoft or Tencent, have also closed their divisions dedicated to the metaverse to definitely invest in the development of generative artificial intelligence.
There are few who still project a future marked by the metaverse. However, some remain hopeful. Apart from the current setbacks, they argue that such a complex technology with so many applications will be developed in the long term.
