Trial and error or perfection? Microsoft has a hard time deciding.
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Author | Xiao Man
Edit | Li Shuaifei
Microsoft's HoloLens 3 project is in doubt.
Recently, a number of foreign media have pointed out that Microsoft has cancelled the HoloLens 3 project internally and instead cooperated with Samsung to develop new devices. As the situation continued to expand, Alex Kipman, the father of HoloLens, made it clear that HoloLens was doing a good job.
However, the discussion of where the HoloLens 3 project will stay continues.
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The holoLens 3 project is in doubt
According to foreign media "Business Insider", Microsoft has canceled the research and development plan of the MR headset HoloLens 3 last year and redefined the new development direction.
The report quoted sources as saying: "There is no doubt that the Calypso project (i.e. HoloLens 3) has been cancelled. All those working on the project have been assigned to other projects or left the company. ”
At the same time, the source also pointed out that Microsoft may decorate the HoloLens 2 slightly and release it as another product, but not Calypso.
After the report became public, Alex Kipman said on Twitter, "Don't believe what you see on the Internet. ”
HoloLens did a great job, and if you search the internet, there have been times when it has been said that we have canceled HoloLens2 ... However, HoloLens2 has achieved gratifying results.
However, the discussion about whether the HoloLens 3 project was canceled did not stop. After all, whether it is the internal personnel turmoil at Microsoft or the game between HoloLens' current positioning and reality, HoloLens 3 has great uncertainty.
It is reported that the reason why Microsoft canceled this project is to concentrate talent resources and cooperate with Samsung to develop a new MR device, the project is named after "Project Bondi", still in the form of a headset, but it is completely different from HoloLens, closer to the outside world's predicted Apple AR device, combined with mobile phone devices.
This also caused dissatisfaction among the HoloLens team, and some employees believed that the cooperation between the two sides meant that the development of HoloLens 3 was coming to an end; this was obviously not what the team wanted to see.
This is indirectly confirmed by Business Insider's survey of nearly 20 employees on the HoloLens team, which mentions strategic uncertainty and hints at different factions within the company about the future direction of HoloLens —some believe HoloLens should continue the B-side route and provide software and hardware support to existing enterprise/military customers; others believe that it should focus on the consumer VR software market.
Under the chaotic strategy, the military morale of Microsoft's internal team was gradually shaken.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft's AR team (about 1500 people) will have about 100 employees leave in 2021 and flow to apple, Meta and other technology companies, including MR technology researcher Don Box, computer vision engineer Dave Reed, HoloLens former customer feedback head Charlie Han and former member of the display team, currently director of Meta display Josh Miller and so on.
In fact, the differentiation of Microsoft's internal opinions is actually the contradiction between the MR development strategy that Microsoft has always adhered to and the development of C-end hardware devices under the current metaverse concept, as well as the mapping of Microsoft's own thinking on the development of future software and hardware.
This is a difficult problem that Microsoft has to face head-on, and it is also a challenge that it must go through to the future.
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Microsoft doesn't want to miss the metaverse
A senior industry observer once told Leifeng that before the meta-universe really landed and exploded, technology giants including Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple were looking for the most suitable way to enter under the original business extension.
For Microsoft, as early as the PC era, the software ecology with the Windows system is naturally its advantage. However, in the field of AR/VR, Microsoft has cut a hole in the hardware.
Back in January 2015, Microsoft unveiled the original HoloLens to the outside world when it released the Windows 10 operating system, a standalone mixed reality device with a head-mounted design, a separate CPU and GPU, like a full computer, running a dedicated version of Windows 10.
Although the original HoloLens is very impressive, it is not a perfect product, it only supports simple gesture interaction, lacks a deep understanding of the environment, and is difficult to commercially land.
In response, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella responded to Dreamforce held in the same year that "the Consumer Version of HoloLens will not arrive for 5 years", but the HoloLens 2 unveiled in 2019 did not achieve this rhetoric.
Leifeng network note: Image source UPLOAD
In fact, the high pricing of HoloLens 3500 US dollars is doomed to not be a people-friendly technology product, for a long time, its commercial value has been questioned, and even dubbed "high-tech toys" by the outside world - until it has begun to find the landing application value at the B end, which has made the outside world change its mind.
One of the most well-known is the $21.88 billion contract signed by the U.S. Army in April 2021 to produce 120,000 HoloLens helmets for the U.S. Army over 10 years.
However, with the popularity of the metaverse concept, there is a big gap between the high-priced HoloLens and the consumer-facing AR/VR devices, which has become an important factor for Microsoft to reconsider the HoloLens project - after all, in the practice of the previous decade, HoloLens has always been difficult to apply on the consumer side.
In addition, under the boom of major technology giants scrambling to lay out the metaverse, it is still doubtful whether Microsoft, which lacks hardware genes, can make VR/AR devices that compete with Apple's AR glasses and Meta Oculus quest.
In the meta-universe, Microsoft rarely has the opportunity to trial and error, and every step of the choice is very important.
According to foreign media speculation, even if Microsoft plans to cancel the HoloLens project internally, it does not mean that it will abandon the entry meta-universe, but may enter the market in a more radical way.
Judging from the news that Microsoft and Samsung may reach a cooperation on AR/VR, Microsoft is likely to use Samsung's power to develop consumer-grade AR/VR hardware products, so as to concentrate on the development of the system layer and software layer to provide support for other brands of AR/VR products - and this section is currently in a blank period.
For Microsoft, hardware is an important window to open up future imaginations, but software is also an important and indispensable part of it. Relatively speaking, the latter is its strong point.
In fact, in the development of the first two generations of HoloLens, Microsoft intentionally laid out the software layer, providing technologies including Azure Kinect, Spatial Anchors and Mesh, which took an important step for the layout of the software ecosystem.
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Trial and error or perfection? Microsoft has a hard time deciding
Whether it is the strategic cooperation with Samsung or the uncertainty within Microsoft about the development of HoloLens, it is not so much Microsoft's solution to the current contradictions as Microsoft's choice of future development direction.
Obviously, Microsoft did not dare to gamble on the HoloLens, but chose another path that took both sides - that is, working with Samsung to develop new devices while concentrating on developing system software.
However, it should be pointed out that even if a partnership with Samsung and the development of potential cloud-based mixed reality devices are still in their infancy, there is great uncertainty in the current cooperation project. According to people familiar with the matter, "The device is in the early stages of planning and may still undergo significant changes." ”
For the meta-universe, Microsoft has repeatedly stated that it will vigorously promote it, and in January this year, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard with its highest acquisition price of $68.7 billion, when Microsoft made it clear that the acquisition would play a key role in the development of the company's meta-universe; its ambition was enough to be seen.
At the moment when the concept of metaversity is hot, Microsoft urgently needs to start from its own reality and set a clear development path, and in this process, the game between its past MR strategy and the reality of the situation has been chaotic, and the pain it has to face is also a challenge that it has to face.
The future is often only a temporary choice. This is a bet on the future, no one knows the final card, even if it is as powerful as Microsoft, it needs to be cautious.
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