Disney reportedly has shelved its metaverse unit, as the company goes through its first round of announced layoffs.
More than 4,000 people are expected to lose their jobs during three rounds of layoffs at the company over the next couple of months, as Disney looks to eliminate about 7,000 positions in all. The remainder will come from not filling or eliminating open positions.
Among those dismissed in the opening round of layoffs are about 50 positions in the team tasked with developing Disney's metaverse strategy and products, according to multiple news reports.
The metaverse project was one of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek's initiatives. Former Disney Parks EVP Tilak Mandadi detailed Disney's vision for the metaverse in November 2020 during the IAAPA Expo Virtual Education Conference that was help in lieu of the IAAPA Expo that year.
What the "metaverse" exactly is has been a point of debate for many, but to me it always seemed to me to be little more than the Covid lockdown experience, minus the tiny shred of human dignity in at least seeing other people's faces in your Zoom calls. That said, the technology behind online connectivity can power many great interactive experiences. It's just that people want that interaction to be grounded as an expression of human contact, not divorced from that.
Reportedly, the head of Disney's metaverse team, Mike White, will remain with the company in another role.
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I will say I do miss the VOID experience when they had the Disney license. Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire was a pretty spectacular experience. I'm assuming Disney is trying to mimic the VOID, but do it in-house.
I hope these layoffs and reorgs don't affect their efforts.
This is a perfect example of corporate America jumping on a bandwagon because everyone else was doing it, and hopefully this shedding of the metaverse nonsense becomes a trend and its relegated to nothing more than a 1 minute segment of "I love the 2020s" on VH1.
Last Sunday, Folding Ideas published an hour & 50 minute video about what the Metaverse actually means by profiling Decentraland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q
It's long, but well researched and delivered. But for a woefully inadequate tl;dr: The term of a "Metaverse" is a term which both says a lot and means nothing concrete. With that there is no center in which to build a project from, only a hand waving gesture when nailing down specifics.
I want to be clear that there is no joy in people loosing their jobs. But I don't see how there was a path to success considering the lack of concrete goals for the project.
@MyHands 100 percent agreed. The Star Wars VOID experience was well executed, and I say that as someone who's not a big fan of VR/AR/Anything That Makes Me Walk Around Wearing A Gigantic Headset.
I will admit that I do miss the VOID experience when they had the Disney license. The experience of playing Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire was rather amazing. I assume Disney is attempting to replicate the VOID internally.
I loved the VOID In 2018, but home technology quickly caught up, and similar experiences can be found on PSVR and Oculus Quest (or MetaQuest if you prefer). I suspect Disney will update their Star Wars offering on a home platform rather than in limited markets like VOID did.
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Lex Luthor eliminated food cashiers but had people working to build the metaverse no one wants? Good riddance, Chapek, you sucked so hard you made Eisner look like Walt by comparison.
Many people fundamentally don't want to cover up their senses. "Hey, if you let me put this bag over your head, I promise you'll see something amazing!" Uh, no thanks.