Microsoft’s Activision deal may bring ‘Metaverse’ to enterprise tech

Odd as it might seem, videogames have already had an outsize influence on corporate technology—in areas like online collaboration, artificial intelligence and virtual marketplaces, among others.

By acquiring Activision—announced Tuesday, the deal is valued at $75 billion—Microsoft also is taking a big step into the metaverse, analysts say, referring to the emerging development of a three-dimensional virtual world where users produce, buy and sell goods and services online within a self-contained digital economy.

Much of the technology expected to underpin the metaverse, including both hardware and software, comes straight out of the gaming world, analysts say, pointing to Activision franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush. Those games would now become part of Microsoft’s own stable of Xbox games, including Minecraft and Doom.

“Microsoft has obviously been a leader in business-to-business technology in general, and also pioneers in virtual reality and augmented reality,” said Jeremy Bailenson, co-founder of VR-based training platform Strivr and founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. “Now, they instantly have access to one of the most elaborate and long-running metaverses of all time with World of Warcraft,” he said, referring to the online role-playing game that helped popularize the purchase of virtual goods.

Microsoft declined to comment.

For chief information officers and other corporate tech leaders, the metaverse offers an array of digital-first strategies in core business areas, such as remote job interviews in virtual settings, internal training simulations, 3-D demos, digital malls and events to promote products and services—all interacting with customers’ videogame-like avatars.

“We see this as a forerunner into the enterprise metaverse,” Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at IT consulting firm Constellation Research Inc., said of Tuesday’s acquisition.

Constellation estimates the metaverse economy will be worth $21.7 trillion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.6%, as businesses increasingly leverage a mix of augmented and virtual reality to reach customers via avatars, bots and other digital surrogates.

Constellation lists Activision as a key player to watch, along with Fortnite-maker Epic Games Inc. and Active Theory LLC, among others.

“Every enterprise will want to reach people through the metaverse, whether to communicate, to advertise or to do business with people who are making virtual reality their place of business,” said Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture-capital investor who made early bets on video-chatting service Skype and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, among other tech ventures.

Mr. Draper said innovation in the gaming industry has always had a far-reaching impact. Among other examples, he said, virtual currencies created by gaming companies have given rise to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“The metaverse is real, and I believe that a ‘Ready, Player One’ world will become a larger and larger part of our economy,” Mr. Draper said.

In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc., with plans to expand its namesake social-media platform into the metaverse.

Joost van Dreunen, who teaches the business of videogames at the New York University Stern School of Business, said many technology platforms initially intended to support nonwork uses over time have found their way into the enterprise world. Slack Technologies Inc.’s office chat tool, for instance, began as a messaging feature for a videogame. In December 2020, Salesforce Inc., an enterprise IT stalwart, announced it would acquire Slack for roughly $27 billion.

Unleashing gaming technology on the workplace offers depth and multiple dimensions to otherwise static communications models, Mr. van Dreunen said: “Companies could consider layering gaming with other communications platforms.”

That said, the metaverse is likely years away.

“The tech still isn’t there yet,” said Sally Earnshaw, managing director at the culture change practice at Gallagher, a consulting firm. So far, there are not enough consistent platforms, or common language or standards for integration, she said.

“But there will be a lot more stand-alone virtual environments starting to be used in the workspace soon,” she added.