Went in expecting to see at least a 1000 employees laid off.. but 50? Can that even be called a 'Division'? Is that Division on par with other divisions Disney runs, like Disney Studios (Marvel Studios, Disney, Pixar...), Streaming (Disney+, ESPN+) or the Theme Park division?
I don't think Disney had any metaverse building ambitions. This "metaverse" team was probably working on designing NFTs and digital "assets" for any metaverse that emerges.
This is an uninformed take based on recollections of what they've released and my understanding of Disney's competencies.
Somebody watching closely will hopefully have more insight.
Which sounds like it could be why it isn't a "division" any more. VR feels like an all-or-nothing play where Disney throwing a bunch of Disney IP, +AAA quality worlds, PR & marketing dollars and carefully-selected hardware partnerships could mainstream VR as family friendly entertainment, whereas making assets for other people's open worlds participated in by a niche group of adult men seems like the sort of thing that's more likely to lead to reputation damage than significant revenue streams
My guess from having worked in close proximity to the executives involved is that it was more of a skunkworks/prototyping group, possibly partnering with ILMxLab, Pixar, Disney Animation, and the streaming group. While Disney is not really a tech company, there are pockets of high end expertise which I think are relevant to the loosely defined “metaverse.”
Mike White, the exec leading the group, reported into Kareem Daniel, who was central to Chapek’s vision of Disney. So it was a significant role. Mind you, Daniel was fired about five seconds after Iger returned.
Terminology varies widely between companies but terms like "division" are usually based on position in the org chart rather than size. It looks like the metaverse division was organized under Mike White, whose title appears to have been "SVP of next-generation storytelling." It's common for a group that reports at the SVP level to be called a division, even if its small. The higher up in the org chart you find a group, the more important it probably is to the strategic focus of the company, even if it's small.
That not how the word "division" works when talking about business, Instagram was made of 10 people when it already had billions of users and if Disney or anyone else had bought them it would certainly be a "division" given that their tasks are a separate entity from their rest of the org.
When I onboarded at IBM, during legal and compliance training they said “the easiest way to get promoted to executive at IBM is to do something wrong, and get quoted in the press about it”. The idea being: the media will refer to anyone who works for a company as an ‘executive’ regardless of how accurate that term is to their actual role.
Similarly, in news reporting, every department is a ‘division’.
It was one of Bob Chapek's visions, so as expected was extremely half arsed.
He had very little concept of what Disney should be doing so just thew out a bunch of ideas with very little budget and expected them to work, whilst also penny pinching beyond belief.
