Microsoft Enters Metaverse with Teams and Xbox Upgrades

In addition to improvements to its gaming console services Teams and Xbox, Microsoft is introducing a new product dubbed “Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces” that will allow users to collaborate in the Metaverse. At the Microsoft Ignite conference on November 2nd, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted the company’s Metaverse ambitions for Teams and Spaces, as well as other initiatives.

“By using the Metaverse, we can integrate computing in the real world while also embedding the actual world in computers.” Bring a sense of physical presence to any digital environment. We have the ability to carry our humanity with us and choose how we want to experience this world, which is the most essential thing, according to Nadella.

The metaverse is there and it changes not only how we see the world, but also how we participate in it ̵
1; from the factory floor to the meeting room. Just look. pic.twitter.com/h5tsdYMXRD
– Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 2, 2021

The “Mesh” version for Microsoft Teams is scheduled to be released in 2022, and it will provide users with individualised digital avatars and immersive venues to meet in the metaverse “that can be accessible from any device without the need for specific equipment,” according to Microsoft.

Later on in the development of mesh, businesses will be able to design unique rooms to accommodate a variety of situations such as meetings or “social mixers.”

It is projected that the Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces solution will be available in preview for the first time in December 2021, allowing businesses to integrate the metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI) into their operations. “Spaces” may be used to record observation data from cameras in a variety of settings, including “retail stores and manufacturing floors,” according to the business, which describes this as a “hybrid work environment.”

The general manager of Connected Spaces, Vishal Sood, stated on his blog in January of this year, “With the power of your current cameras, you can employ computer vision and observation data to complete the image – and provide a fresh perspective on people, places, and objects.”

In order to comprehend particular situations such as consumer behaviour during a promotional presentation, traffic patterns, and unique insights into your area, you just switch on AI-powered models known as talents after they have been installed. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, claimed in an interview with Bloomberg TV on November 3 that the Xbox video game firm would “definitely” be trying to include the Metaverse into its game lines.

As a result, the CEO played his cards close to his chest and did not provide any precise information on the gaming industry. In Nadella’s words, “you can certainly expect us to do stuff in the gaming area.” He went on to say that Halo, as a game, is a metaverse. Flight Simulator is a metaverse, and so is Minecraft. In some respects, they are 2D now, and the issue is whether or not you can move it into a fully 3D environment now, which is something we are absolutely planning.

This week, Microsoft isn’t the first major corporation to announce ambitions for the Metaverse. Additionally, the business has just advertised two positions for virtual materials designers. “They will play a critical part in reinventing our digital environment and ushering us into the metaverse,” Nike said of the new hires.

Facebook, the social media behemoth, is known to have taken the plunge into the Metaverse, with the renaming of the company to Meta and the creation of a company that is working to offer creators a platform to build virtual online businesses, connect online experiences with the physical world, and his virtual reality hardware business called “Reality Labs,” among other things.

During an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on October 29, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian expressed his thoughts on Facebook’s intentions, calling it as a “masterpiece of diversion and distraction” from the problems that have bedevilled the corporation in recent years. Ohanian acknowledged that meta should not be “underestimated,” but said that there was enough organic activity from the crypto sector to build an open metaverse rather than one controlled by the social media giant: “Right now, there is this bottom-up effort to construct the Etaverse.”

We’ve seen what’s going on in the cryptocurrency community… we’ve seen a lot of individuals working hard to create what I believe will be a much more organic sort of society than the one imposed by Facebook.