The metaverse is something of an internet buzzword, at least for the casual user. However, in the halls of the world's tech giants, it is a very serious thing. Sure, it's nebulous and ill-defined right now, but a lot of companies are putting a lot of resources into the metaverse. Microsoft is among them, and the company's president Brad Smith has been discussing its plans.
Meta – the parent of Facebook – probably has the most realized concept of what its metaverse plans are. Other companies are less defined, including Epic Games which pulled in a $2 billion investment for its metaverse goals but has to say what those goals are.
For Microsoft, Brad Smith was talking to CNBC's TechCheck where he was asked if Microsoft is going to directly rival Meta.
Specifically, Meta is going full steam ahead with monetizing its metaverse content, hardly a surprise. The company is tacking on a 47.5% fee on creators who sell their content in its ecosystem. That is a huge tariff for what is a nascent product.
Microsoft's Plan
With plenty of metaverse options on the horizon, will Microsoft take a similar approach and potentially price itself out? Smith says that is unlikely.
“I will be very surprised if you see something like that at Microsoft,” Smith says. He adds Microsoft sees the metaverse as an entity of disparate parts instead of a unified monolithic idea. Smith believes Microsoft can engage developers by simply providing them an accessible platform.
“One way you make room for developers is: You offer them a good deal,” he points out. In other words, Microsoft will not be hitting developers with massive fees to host content on its metaverse products.
We'll see.
Tip of the day: It's a good idea to backup your computer on a regular basis, and the most fool-proof way is to manually create a disk image and save it to an external hard drive.
