4 ms·

Why did Microsoft give up on AR/VR just when Apple and Meta have shipped the fruits of their massive R&D investments and are spending to create the market? Sur

by pavlov 3y ago

Why did Microsoft give up on AR/VR just when Apple and Meta have shipped the fruits of their massive R&D investments and are spending to create the market? Sure, Windows Mixed Reality wasn’t great. Maybe in the current marketplace it was the Windows 2.0 to Apple’s Mac. But the old Microsoft would have persisted when underestimated and come back with a sneakily good 3.0 product.

KingMachiavelli 3y ago
Because Microsoft doesn't get a 30% cut of products sold for it's platforms. Also Windows on ARM hasn't caught on and x86 has only recently been closing the performance per watt gap with ARM. Meta's headset is Android based so it has 18+ years of low power, ARM performance and power tweaking. And Apple is using their in-house M series chips. Microsoft's bread and butter is B2B; Azure, Office, etc. The Xbox and consumer divisions are just too small to take on high cost, novel devices. They've historically not been great at branding or marketing direct to consumer either. (Zune, those Microsoft store commercials, etc.).
- pavlov 3y ago
  Fundamentally those are excuses based on Microsoft’s current market position. When they invested in Windows 1.0, their existing users were not asking for it and didn’t have a use for it. MS-DOS wasn’t a good foundation for a GUI, the IBM PC hardware was misaligned (e.g. terrible graphics), and obviously Apple was miles ahead. The product didn’t fit any of Microsoft’s existing strengths and felt like a toy rather than a credible business tool. By the same logic that’s applied to AR/VR today, Microsoft absolutely should have exited the GUI market in 1988. (They were even a leading Mac software vendor! Why bother making their own worse GUI?)
  - bonzini 3y ago
    > IBM PC hardware was misaligned (e.g. terrible graphics) In 1985 it was terrible for games due to no sprites, but business applications run on the Hercules graphics card (monochrome but 720x348) or EGA, which had decent resolution and was way better than the competition for business applications. It had worse color resolution than say the Amiga, but by 1988 the VGA had fixed that as well.
    - rini17 3y ago
      How was it better for business? Text mode?There were plenty of terminals available at that time with better monochrome and color text modes and fonts, even line graphics support. It was about various attractive business software available for PC, not about EGA being superior somehow.
  - ohthehugemanate 3y ago
    It's ok to make short sighted investment decisions based on current market position, especially when one of your biggest bets from the last decade is striking gold in a big way, and you need all hands on deck to reap maximum strategic value during the temporary opportunity window. In that phase, it makes absolute sense to reduce or cut anything that is not CURRENTLY performing well, in favor of the area that is taking off and needs all the push you can give it. When the gen AI market stabilizes, ideally with Microsoft in a dominant position, it will again be appropriate to diversify bets. That includes pushes for markets where MS can grab 2nd or even 3rd place.
    - jdsully 3y ago
      The old Microsoft wasn't so myopic which resulted in not one but two of the biggest software dynasties with windows and office and in more recent times Azure. You can't get a winner if you leave the game early.
- johnny_canuck 3y ago
  I recall in the late 2000s Microsoft had some of the best mice and keyboards on the market, but you'd never know they existed unless you happened upon them.
  - orbital-decay 3y ago
    Gamers definitely did know. For a good part of the decade, the basic IntelliMouse Optical (2001 revision) was one of the very few devices that didn't have pointer assistance gimmicks that stand in your way, like angle snapping. It was sought after well into 2010s, despite it being limited to the measly 125Hz polling rate, having high SRAV and slippery sides.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Good point but Google gets a 30% cut for things on Android and they killed their VR/AR as well. I do think the stupid ads and rent seeking turned out to be so incredibly lucrative that it's essentially all that companies can think about.
AmVess 3y ago
Meta isn't creating a market, rather instead a hole in which they've dumped 30+ billion dollars into with nothing to show for it. Apple's VR is nothing new and will also fail.
- DANmode 3y ago
  Accusing Meta of not being able to set trends is fair. But Apple?! Bit off more than you could chew, there, I think.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Meta has sold far more VR headsets than all other the other brands combined. Unlike Apple's headset, they also have a clear use case, a "killer feature": VR games. Something you can't have without VR. Apple seems to just offer somewhat improved(?) experiences for watching TV and working with multiple monitors.
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      Yeah I 100% agree. No matter how impressive AVP is, it's still clearly worse than just a normal laptop/TV. You can do all the same things but just more painfully and at lower quality. Quest games make much more sense because it's a completely different thing to non-VR games. You can't just say "well I'll play beatsabre on my laptop". That said, they seem to be losing money hand over fist anyway.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Honestly you could though. Beat saber has basically nothing in it that couldn’t have been done with a Kinect (sp?) or a wii.
        cubefox 3y ago
        They could have made such a third-person game -- if those systems did still exist.
ahiknsr 3y ago
maybe due to https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/7/23159049/microsoft-hololens-boss-alex-kipman-leaves-resigns-misconduct-allegations https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/7/23159049/microsoft-hololen...
- MikusR 3y ago
  From the linked post: "This deprecation does not impact HoloLens."
  - zmmmmm 3y ago
    Does hololens really not depend on WMR at all?
    - MikusR 3y ago
      Hololens is standalone
jayd16 3y ago
Microsoft's strategy was a mess. They were pushing a lot of vaporware so they could imagine a world where Azure rendered XR frames and streamed it to headsets. Definitely a lot of thinking about how to charge for something and working backwards not meeting the actually cool but fledgling tech being built. Teams integration was pushed and is a mess with or without XR. They finally launched something that should be able to connect web cam and XR users in a teams session but why... AFAICT it's in a special teams app. Apple's face time windows that are not a full overlay are a better fit for a productive experience. I haven't checked out the new Teams yet, though. Maybe its just not in the marketing material. They had the first inkling of the exciting spatially anchored app stuff that the Vision Pro is pushing but it just was not fleshed out or really pursued beyond proof of concept. MR for Windows was just not a good value add in general. It didn't supplant SteamVR or Oculus and Microsoft didn't (and doesn't) have a way to capitalize on their commoditization so what even is the point? Right now, making XR apps is their only coherent strategy.
zamadatix 3y ago
Apple thinks it has a new and different approach which will be popular, Meta is hoping their current approach will lead to widespread popularity if they keep going at it, and Microsoft had an approach they tried but it didn't really work out and they don't want to throw their hat in the ring again quite yet. Which of these decisions end up working out or not requires waiting 10+ years and looking back. Companies were hyped about 3D TVs, some held out longer than others, it turned out to be a bad idea. Companies were hyped about e-readers in the 90s but it didn't pan out at first only to be successful with future innovations and iterations and it turned out to be a good idea.

by pavlov 3y ago

KingMachiavelli 3y ago

Because Microsoft doesn't get a 30% cut of products sold for it's platforms. Also Windows on ARM hasn't caught on and x86 has only recently been closing the performance per watt gap with ARM. Meta's headset is Android based so it has 18+ years of low power, ARM performance and power tweaking. And Apple is using their in-house M series chips. Microsoft's bread and butter is B2B; Azure, Office, etc. The Xbox and consumer divisions are just too small to take on high cost, novel devices. They've historically not been great at branding or marketing direct to consumer either. (Zune, those Microsoft store commercials, etc.).

pavlov 3y ago
Fundamentally those are excuses based on Microsoft’s current market position. When they invested in Windows 1.0, their existing users were not asking for it and didn’t have a use for it. MS-DOS wasn’t a good foundation for a GUI, the IBM PC hardware was misaligned (e.g. terrible graphics), and obviously Apple was miles ahead. The product didn’t fit any of Microsoft’s existing strengths and felt like a toy rather than a credible business tool. By the same logic that’s applied to AR/VR today, Microsoft absolutely should have exited the GUI market in 1988. (They were even a leading Mac software vendor! Why bother making their own worse GUI?)
- bonzini 3y ago
  > IBM PC hardware was misaligned (e.g. terrible graphics) In 1985 it was terrible for games due to no sprites, but business applications run on the Hercules graphics card (monochrome but 720x348) or EGA, which had decent resolution and was way better than the competition for business applications. It had worse color resolution than say the Amiga, but by 1988 the VGA had fixed that as well.
  - rini17 3y ago
    How was it better for business? Text mode?There were plenty of terminals available at that time with better monochrome and color text modes and fonts, even line graphics support. It was about various attractive business software available for PC, not about EGA being superior somehow.
- ohthehugemanate 3y ago
  It's ok to make short sighted investment decisions based on current market position, especially when one of your biggest bets from the last decade is striking gold in a big way, and you need all hands on deck to reap maximum strategic value during the temporary opportunity window. In that phase, it makes absolute sense to reduce or cut anything that is not CURRENTLY performing well, in favor of the area that is taking off and needs all the push you can give it. When the gen AI market stabilizes, ideally with Microsoft in a dominant position, it will again be appropriate to diversify bets. That includes pushes for markets where MS can grab 2nd or even 3rd place.
  - jdsully 3y ago
    The old Microsoft wasn't so myopic which resulted in not one but two of the biggest software dynasties with windows and office and in more recent times Azure. You can't get a winner if you leave the game early.
johnny_canuck 3y ago
I recall in the late 2000s Microsoft had some of the best mice and keyboards on the market, but you'd never know they existed unless you happened upon them.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  Gamers definitely did know. For a good part of the decade, the basic IntelliMouse Optical (2001 revision) was one of the very few devices that didn't have pointer assistance gimmicks that stand in your way, like angle snapping. It was sought after well into 2010s, despite it being limited to the measly 125Hz polling rate, having high SRAV and slippery sides.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Good point but Google gets a 30% cut for things on Android and they killed their VR/AR as well. I do think the stupid ads and rent seeking turned out to be so incredibly lucrative that it's essentially all that companies can think about.

AmVess 3y ago

Meta isn't creating a market, rather instead a hole in which they've dumped 30+ billion dollars into with nothing to show for it. Apple's VR is nothing new and will also fail.

DANmode 3y ago
Accusing Meta of not being able to set trends is fair. But Apple?! Bit off more than you could chew, there, I think.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Meta has sold far more VR headsets than all other the other brands combined. Unlike Apple's headset, they also have a clear use case, a "killer feature": VR games. Something you can't have without VR. Apple seems to just offer somewhat improved(?) experiences for watching TV and working with multiple monitors.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    Yeah I 100% agree. No matter how impressive AVP is, it's still clearly worse than just a normal laptop/TV. You can do all the same things but just more painfully and at lower quality. Quest games make much more sense because it's a completely different thing to non-VR games. You can't just say "well I'll play beatsabre on my laptop". That said, they seem to be losing money hand over fist anyway.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Honestly you could though. Beat saber has basically nothing in it that couldn’t have been done with a Kinect (sp?) or a wii.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        They could have made such a third-person game -- if those systems did still exist.

ahiknsr 3y ago

maybe due to https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/7/23159049/microsoft-hololens-boss-alex-kipman-leaves-resigns-misconduct-allegations https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/7/23159049/microsoft-hololen...

MikusR 3y ago
From the linked post: "This deprecation does not impact HoloLens."
- zmmmmm 3y ago
  Does hololens really not depend on WMR at all?
  - MikusR 3y ago
    Hololens is standalone

jayd16 3y ago

Microsoft's strategy was a mess. They were pushing a lot of vaporware so they could imagine a world where Azure rendered XR frames and streamed it to headsets. Definitely a lot of thinking about how to charge for something and working backwards not meeting the actually cool but fledgling tech being built. Teams integration was pushed and is a mess with or without XR. They finally launched something that should be able to connect web cam and XR users in a teams session but why... AFAICT it's in a special teams app. Apple's face time windows that are not a full overlay are a better fit for a productive experience. I haven't checked out the new Teams yet, though. Maybe its just not in the marketing material. They had the first inkling of the exciting spatially anchored app stuff that the Vision Pro is pushing but it just was not fleshed out or really pursued beyond proof of concept. MR for Windows was just not a good value add in general. It didn't supplant SteamVR or Oculus and Microsoft didn't (and doesn't) have a way to capitalize on their commoditization so what even is the point? Right now, making XR apps is their only coherent strategy.

zamadatix 3y ago

Apple thinks it has a new and different approach which will be popular, Meta is hoping their current approach will lead to widespread popularity if they keep going at it, and Microsoft had an approach they tried but it didn't really work out and they don't want to throw their hat in the ring again quite yet. Which of these decisions end up working out or not requires waiting 10+ years and looking back. Companies were hyped about 3D TVs, some held out longer than others, it turned out to be a bad idea. Companies were hyped about e-readers in the 90s but it didn't pan out at first only to be successful with future innovations and iterations and it turned out to be a good idea.