Key takeaways:
- Microsoft’s Metaverse will include corporate applications with practical use cases, with gaming futures coming later on
- The metaverse concept has garnered a huge amount of attention, especially since Facebook rebranded to Meta
- Metaverse-focused crypto projects have exploded in popularity over the past week
Microsoft, one of the Big Five US information technology giants, is working on a version of a metaverse, which will be focused on corporate use-cases as well as on entertainment features as a part of the Xbox gaming ecosystem.
Microsoft Teams and Excell in a virtual world
Few technological concepts in the recent past have captured the attention of the masses and experts alike as did the idea of the metaverse – a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users. While VR worlds might have seemed a far-fetched utopian dream of avid technological junkies just a decade ago, the increase in computing capabilities and widespread high-speed access to the internet have made it a reality.
Facebook’s recent name change to Meta is a clear sign of where the tech sector is moving in the coming year. The cryptocurrency space is full of projects that are based on some particular aspect of the metaverse. For instance, blockchain projects such as Axie Infinity (AXS) and Decentraland (MANA) have laid out their own vision of the blockchain-based future and enjoyed a huge amount of market success over the past year.
Now, the Redmond-based tech giant is hopping onto the latest trend. Speaking with Bloomberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained his vision of a corporate metaverse, where users will be able to interact with each other in 3D and experience a work environment from the comfort of their homes. Nadella gave several examples of how the new tech might be used over the coming years:
“There is nothing creepy about visiting a COVID ward remotely for a doctor to be able to help their patients, or to be able to do remote assistance in a manufacturing line in a time of COVID crisis when that manufacturing line needs to be fixed by an engineer working from home.”
Microsoft is reportedly bringing a VR version of Microsoft Teams to customers next year. The new version of popular conferencing software will allow users to share Office files in virtual reality. Microsoft has long been developing its own version of augmented reality (AR) tech, dubbed HoloLens, which allows users to experience digital aspects of VR in the real world. The tech giant is well aware that the majority of users don’t own AR- or VR-capable equipment – that is why customers will be able to experience 3D models in 2D format as well.
Metaverse is coming to the Xbox gaming platform in the future
At the moment, Microsoft is mostly focusing on practical use cases of the metaverse, such as customers being able to visit Best Buy stores from home, or doctors being able to visit Covid patients from the safety of VR. However, Nadella made it clear that gaming features are in the pipeline. Nadella elaborated:
“You can absolutely expect us to do things in gaming. If you take Halo as a game, it is a metaverse. Minecraft is a metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In some sense, they are 2D today, but the question is, can you now take that to a full 3D world, and so we absolutely plan to do so.”
In this sense, Microsoft’s vision is in line with companies that are hard at work to combine blockchain technology with gaming. The proliferation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is allowing gaming platforms to build unique digital items that users can own, sell, or buy. The fact that users are able to own their digital game inventory carries huge implications for the future, since it introduces the concept of ownership of digital assets in a similar vein to real-world physical items.
French video game giant Ubisoft has recently unveiled its plans to deepen its commitment to blockchain gaming during the Q2 earnings call. The company’s CFO Frédérick Duguet spoke about the importance of content ownership and play-to-earn monetization model:
“[Blockchain] will enable more play-to-earn that will enable more players to actually earn content, own content, and we think it’s going to grow the industry quite a lot.”
Since Facebook changed its name, cryptocurrency metaverse projects have garnered a huge amount of interest from market participants. Most notably, Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND) have gained more than 270% each in the past seven days.
