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Journalism of Courage
Microsoft plans to shut down Altspace VR, the social virtual reality (VR) platform, on March 10, 2023. The Silicon Valley heavyweight shared the news in a blog post just days after it announced 10,000 job cuts globally as a part of the restructuring exercise.
“As we look to the future, we see the opportunity for VR expanding beyond consumer into business and now have an even greater goal: a more open, accessible, and secure version of immersive experiences in the metaverse,” reads the blog post. “With Mesh, we aspire to build a platform that offers the widest opportunity to all involved, including creators, partners and customers.”
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Microsoft is still in the race for metaverse with its Mesh platform, a service to build apps for people to collaborate in augmented reality. However, lately, the company has been scaling back on its metaverse ambitions. Just last week, Microsoft said it would cut its global workforce by five percent, with around 10,000 layoffs. The layoffs extend to Microsoft’s AR and VR departments, with Windows Central reporting the entire team behind AltspaceVR appears to have been axed. In fact, Microsoft has reportedly axed the team behind the ‘Mixed Reality Tool Kit’ or MRTK, a popular cross-platform framework for virtual reality spaces. In recent years, the division behind the HoloLens headset has number of challenges, especially after the departure of Alex Kimpan, who once lead the teams developing Microsoft’s mixed-reality headset and Kinect.
