Xbox’s Phil Spencer says the metaverse is a “poorly built video game”

Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, is the most recent tech exec to take a shot at Meta’s imaginative and prescient of the metaverse. When requested his definition of the metaverse, Spencer described it as “a poorly built video game” on the WSJ Tech Live convention at the moment.

Meta rebranded from Facebook final yr as a testomony to its concentrate on the metaverse, which it believes will change into a spot the place you not solely socialize with mates but additionally do critical work with colleagues. It appears as if Spencer doesn’t essentially agree with the work facet of the metaverse, no less than in a single type. “Video game creators have an amazing ability to build compelling worlds that we want to go spend time in,” he stated on the convention. “For me, building a metaverse that looks like a meeting room… I just find that’s not where I want to spend most of my time.”

Spencer wasn’t the one particular person to push again on the concept of the metaverse throughout WSJ Tech Live. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel outlined the metaverse as “living inside a computer” and adopted that up by saying, “The last thing I want to do when I get home from work at the end of a long day is live inside a computer.” Apple’s SVP of worldwide advertising Greg Joswiak stated that the metaverse is “a word I’ll never use.” Disney CEO Bob Chapek stated the corporate tends “not to use” the word metaverse “because for us, that’s a big, broad term. For us, it’s next-generation storytelling.”

Despite Spencer’s feedback, although, he does really feel that the idea of the metaverse goes to alter. “I tease a little bit in [saying it’s] a bad video game. I just think we’re early,” he stated. But he feels that, over time, the metaverse is “going to end up looking a lot more like video games than some of the models that I see for the metaverse today.”

And it’s not shocking that he’s open to the time period — no matter it truly means — on condition that Microsoft has already began discussing the metaverse for its personal ends. The firm stated that its pending Activision Blizzard acquisition would supply “building blocks for the metaverse,” and CEO Satya Nadella spoke throughout Meta’s Connect keynote to speak about how the 2 corporations are collaborating to convey issues like Teams, Windows, and Xbox to VR.

I’m personally skeptical everybody will put on a headset, and even AR glasses, for the overwhelming majority of their day. But if I needed to guess, Meta will possible take a number of cues from online game corporations like Microsoft to make its metaverse concepts extra engaging.