AltspaceVR has had a few near misses over the years, but the company that built the virtual social space before “Metaverse” was a household term is closing its doors for good this time around.
in announcing that the Closed in 2017Microsoft stepped in, and the company came Under the wings of tech giantsNow, Microsoft is killing off AltspaceVR’s virtual reality platform, a network of immersive social spaces that invites people to hang out with friends or colleagues in 3D avatars.
AltspaceVR ends March 10, and Microsoft says it will devote more resources to its mixed reality platform microsoft grid.
“We look forward to what’s to come, including our launch of Microsoft Mesh, a new connectivity and collaboration platform that starts with enabling workplaces globally,” reads the announcement.
“In the near term, we are focusing our VR efforts on workplace experiences, learning from and with our early customers and partners, and making sure we provide a foundation that enables safety, trust and compliance.”
Outside of gaming, Microsoft has built many of its products with an enterprise-first mentality, and VR and mixed reality are no exception. The company noted that it plans to “expand” its VR program to consumers once they set up a workplace.
AltspaceVR may never have built a strong user base — a tall order in VR, given the custom hardware required — but the company very early Social applications of virtual reality.
By 2015, AltspaceVR had Created a powerful social VR platform There, users can hang out in the wood-paneled room, taking in the serene views, watching Taylor Swift music videos together, or surfing the web through a virtual browser. Spatial audio makes the experience more immersive, replicating the way humans perceive sound in real-world environments, and laying the groundwork for virtual events.
At the time, most of the resources and attention in VR was focused on state-of-the-art gaming applications, not virtual party spaces. A full six years later, Meta has launched Horizon Worlds, an AltspaceVR-like experience with innocuously neutral interiors and less-than-realistic avatars.
It’s unclear if Microsoft plans to roll out the product to other VR projects, or to abandon the project altogether.Given the timing, AltspaceVR’s fate could be tied to Microsoft’s dramatic company-wide consolidation, detailed this week. TechCrunch has reached out to the company to learn more about what’s happening with AltspaceVR’s team and technology based on the news.
Among the deep tech layoffs, Microsoft announced that it would cut 5% of its workforce, affecting 10,000 employees. Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella pointed to economic uncertainty and a downturn during the early pandemic tech boom as the rationale behind the massive layoffs.
“We will continue to invest in our future strategic areas, which means we are allocating our capital and talent to areas of long-term growth and long-term competitiveness of the company while divesting in other areas,” Nadella said.
It’s unclear if Microsoft is working on some of its metaverse plans, or if AltspaceVR is just a casualty of widespread company-wide cuts. Just a year ago, Facebook boldly rebranded itself as “Meta,” ushering the industry into a hype cycle around a more immersive, possibly VR-powered vision of social networking.
A year later, metaverse discourse is already rapidly cycling through backlash phases, making the future of avatar-driven virtual social spaces hazy. The Metaverse may not require special hardware at all—the non-VR online world continues to thrive in 2023—but it’s worth remembering that a company started exploring these possibilities long before the tech giants even showed up.
