SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Disney Scraps Metaverse Division As Virtual Worlds Become Yesterday’s Tech Fad [forbes.com]

Disney has eliminated its entire metaverse division of roughly 50 people, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. And while most people are still confused about what the “metaverse” is even supposed to be, Disney has reportedly dropped plans to explore it, as the company begins layoffs of roughly 7,000 people across the entire company.

[...] But the metaverse has become little more than a punchline to many people in the world of tech—an effort to create a virtual world where the only “innovation” was being able to see your coworkers using goofy avatars. Zuckerberg made a pivot in February, announcing that his company was going to focus on artificial intelligence.

[...] History is littered with predictions about virtual reality worlds that were going to change everything, especially during the VR hype cycle of the 1990s. Technologist and media critic Jaron Lanier promised in 1991 that the virtual worlds just over the horizon would transcend physical space. AT&T also created a concept video in 1993 that imagined how kids of the future would be playing video games in virtual reality. NBC News even ran a segment in 1996 warning that people could be getting sick from the technology.

But that vision of the future never arrived, largely because virtual reality headsets are still huge and expensive. The future is incredibly difficult to predict, and no one knows for certain whether AI will be monetized in exciting new ways. But if you have to make a bet on metaverse versus AI, you should probably stick with the latter. Disney certainly is.

Original Submission