Disney may have eliminated its division tasked with exploring the creation of a metaverse, according to a recent report from the The Wall Street Journal. The unit, made up of about 50 employees, was researching different ways to run the Disney franchises to “the next great frontier of storytelling”, in the words of Bob Chapek, former CEO of the company.
The disappearance of this division would be part of the wave of layoffs that Disney plans to carry out, taking place in a total of three rounds. This way, they expect to let go about 7,000 employees, which means a cut of 5.5 billion dollars in costs. Sadly, the company’s metaverse team would have left before offering the fruits of their research.
It was in February of last year that Disney took the opportunity to introduce its metaverse team, which Bob Chapek described as “the next generation storytelling unit.” Besides, was led by Mike Whitewho has been with the company for more than a decade, and whose participation in it seems to be safe at the time of writing this article.
During this year, the team would have worked on ways to take Disney stories to a new level of immersion. While it is not known exactly what the fruits of his research were, The Wall Street Journal mentions that he may have touched on “fantasy sports, theme park attractions and other consumer experiences.”
Disney seems to have given up fighting for its metaverse, and it might not be the only one
The metaverse was one of the most important topics of 2022. Meta was, for sure, the company in charge of popularizing this term among people. However, it seems that not everything is going as expected. If Disney ends up confirming the reports of the The Wall Street Journal, could mean that his ambitions for the metaverse have come to an end permanently, and it is not the only one.
Meta itself has failed to adapt this technology to the real world. The launch of the Meta Quest Pro, the virtual reality headset, had terrible results. In addition, Reality Labs -its division in charge of the metaverse-, reported a loss of 13.7 billion dollars last year. A figure that does not bode well for the future.
At the end of 2022, Meta confirmed its plans to continue investing billions of dollars in the metaverse by 2023. However, neither young people are really attracted to the idea, nor are the big video game or blockchain industries. , two of the main sectors where this technology could have been harnessed.