Microsoft has revealed its plan to create 3D Metaverse apps for Xbox and gaming after just announcing its Microsoft Teams metaverse for meetings and video calls. The company said Microsoft Teams metaverse will enable users to engage in meetings and calls within a virtual environment. This is coming days after Facebook rebranding to Meta and shifting focus onto creating the metaverse.
This was made known by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella while speaking to Bloomberg TV. He said the company is planning to create software around entertainment and gaming. “You can expect us to do things in gaming,” the executive explained. “If you take Halo as a game, it is a metaverse. Minecraft is a metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In some sense, they’re 2D today, and the question is can you now take that to a fully 3D world, and we plan to do so.”
Recalled that Facebook late last month announced to be changing its brand name to Meta, which will make it be shifting focus onto creating the metaverse. Microsoft is seen to be responding to that as it made its intentions to build metaverses based around its popular console Xbox and its games.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company has many plans for expanding into the gaming industry but no specific date yet.
While creating an entire metaverse is a massive undertaking, Microsoft might not be too far off from it, especially when it comes to the games the CEO mentioned. Minecraft and Microsoft Flight Simulator both already support VR headsets, and the latter also allows players to use VR to fly planes within a virtual world.
The CEO didn’t specifically tell when we’ll see Microsoft’s push into a 3D metaverse for gaming more broadly.
The company’s enterprise announcements made earlier are mainly focused on 3D avatars and shared virtual spaces, and Xbox has had its 3D avatars for years now. The question will be how Microsoft adapts its AltspaceVR social network and first-party games for metaverse applications on the Xbox, and whether the company will ever bring VR or AR headsets to Xbox consoles.