With Mesh for Teams, Microsoft is fully in the metaverse

Facebook is now called Meta and made the metaverse (metaverse in French) its new raison d’être. Mark Zuckerberg wants to be at the heart of the creation of this new more embodied Internet, with a lot of virtual and augmented realities. A major announcement that did not fail to react to other giants in the sector, starting with Microsoft, which has increased the number of announcements in this area.

The first of its products to benefit from it is none other than Teams, its online productivity suite, which will integrate Mesh, a collaborative platform based on virtual experiences. The idea is simple: combine Microsoft’s mixed reality technologies (including those integrated into its HoloLens headset) to enrich meetings and other videoconferences, thanks in particular to the addition of avatars. A bit like living your work remotely by playing a video game character. Was this, then, the final stage of the serious gaming ?

Deployment before mid-2022

Microsoft is giving itself a little over six months to turn this promise into reality and plans to deploy Mesh within Teams in the first half of 2022. According to company executives, the timing is ideal for offering these kinds of solutions, at a time when the pandemic has forced the adoption of telework wherever it was possible and where the return to “normal” will generally be done on a hybrid model, alternating face-to-face and remote. With Mesh, Microsoft hopes to make the interviews more lively and find a remedy for the fatigue caused by repeated meetings all day long in video.

Of course, Microsoft knows that the adoption rate of virtual reality headsets remains very low and 3D Mesh avatars will be able to be used without a headset or such glasses. They will be available in 2D or 3D, in animated or non-animated versions, and can be used by meeting participants who do not wish to turn on their webcam or display a photo of themselves. Animated in 3D version, these avatars can adopt different postures and facial expressions representative of the employee’s state of mind, while moving when they express themselves to “Create a feeling of real exchange”.

Finally, Microsoft explains that each company using Teams will be able to create their own working universe for Mesh. Virtual meeting rooms, provision of documents and information, team management, etc., are all elements which, in the long term, will be materialized in 3D in the Microsoft Teams metaverse. A point that Microsoft says it has mastered because, without having access to all the tools imagined for Mesh, its human resources department has already been able to experiment with solutions of this kind during the pandemic in order to enrich the link with remote teams. or carry out the reception of new employees.

Very clearly, when it comes to metaverse, Microsoft seems to want to adopt a strategy focused on the professional world and productivity. But this is not the only path considered by the software publisher whose boss, Satya Nadella, explained to Bloomberg be also focused on the metaverse applied to video games and the Xbox universe. “You can absolutely expect us to do things in games […] If you take Halo like a game, it’s a metaverse. Minecraft is a metaverse, just like Flight Sim. In a sense, they are in 2D today and the question is whether you can now switch to a 3D world. But we absolutely intend to do it ”, did he declare.

A quote necessarily very commented, especially by ironic players who thought that the games cited were “Already in 3D”. Recall that if Minecraft in virtual reality is done, Minecraft earth, an augmented reality mobile version, was quickly abandoned for lack of success. And when Microsoft evokes virtual worlds populated with avatars that interact for fun, one wonders if the company is not on the verge of inventing MMOs.