Just before the weekend, we got official confirmation of Microsoft’s plans to lay off 10,000 people. The layoffs were significant, equating to almost 5% of all employees, or 1/20th of the jobs, even for an employer the size of Microsoft.We are still reeling from news and social media posts (opens in new tab) Microsoft began delineating areas of business where it felt it could lay off entire teams of employees. Some may be surprised to learn that the teams behind projects like HoloLens, AltSpaceVR, and MRTK (Mixed Reality Tool Kit) have been wiped out entirely.
Now that Microsoft has joined the likes of Google, we don’t need to think any further about the scale of Microsoft’s layoffs. Facebook, Amazon Others taking this route for shareholder appeasement in the current recession. Instead, it’s interesting to focus on Microsoft’s headcount cuts.
In our headlines, we use XR as an all-encompassing umbrella for virtual, augmented, mixed and augmented reality. In a recent keynote and appearance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the importance of the “metaverse” not only to the IT industry, but to the coming generation of consumers and work lives. was enthusiastic about So I’m wondering why this part of Microsoft’s business has been cut so drastically.
As for HoloLens, we know it’s already refocused and zoomed out many times. Its chief his architect, Alex Skipman, left a few months ago amidst clouds of controversy.Possibly greater impacts have been reported Problems with HoloLens That means you don’t get the funding to move on, and it could be a test for another project with no future.
of The whole team behind MRTK is gone. MRTK is an open source project designed to facilitate cross-platform HE MR development. This decision is now being made even though MRTK3 (announced last June) was due to ship in his February 2023. Runs on Qualcomm hardware. Due to its open-source nature, there is hope that community support can continue using resources from Microsoft’s last work on MRTK3.
Microsoft acquired AltSpaceVR in 2017 and now it is confirmed that all work on its metaverse project is finished. March 10. sister site Windows Central AltSpaceVR believes it has a successor called Microsoft Mesh, so it looks like the company is keeping its resources allocated to this touted next frontier in the future of the internet. With Microsoft beating out these teams and projects, the XR and Metaverse ambitions look pretty hollow.
Is Microsoft witnessing a new moment for Windows Phone? Does a strategic exit indicate that competitors have lost too much ground to be competitive? How many XR staff members are left and what are the specific projects outside of XR? It’s hard to answer because we don’t have a clear picture of what microsoft mesh (opens in new tab), they are working. We may not know the full extent of the changes, or a clearer picture of Microsoft’s new XR strategy, until the annual BUILD developer conference in May.
