Microsoft Shifts: Software-Led Metaverse Strategy
Microsoft Shifts to a Software-Led Metaverse Strategy
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has confirmed that the company is pivoting from hardware to a software-led metaverse strategy. This shift may not bode well for the company’s hardware projects such as the HoloLens.
In a keynote at the Microsoft Inspire developer conference, Nadella stressed that while Microsoft still has its sights on the metaverse, the company won’t be focusing on the development of XR hardware to take on the likes of Meta and Apple.
Nadella stated that Microsoft is looking for ways of merging the digital and physical worlds in the metaverse and to pursue this, the company will use a “software–led approach” that is hardware agnostic and which will enable everyone to benefit from these experiences no matter the hardware at their disposal.
Microsoft’s Mesh, launched in March 2021, is an XR collaboration platform that provides the infrastructure software which brings together all the hardware across the XR spectrum for applications such as spatial collaboration and holographic meetings. The Mesh features a full suite of tools that can be used to build multi-presence collaborative XR applications.
The Microsoft Mesh for Teams brings mixed reality features to the video meeting platform like avatars for virtual reality and augmented reality as well as a VR meeting room. Nadella says Mesh for Teams is already being put into use internally.
Want to learn more about Microsoft’s ‘software-lead approach’ and its XR hardware challenges?