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Microsoft Admits Sales of 'Expensive' HoloLens 'Not Huge', Says More Versions Are Planned (betanews.com)
Microsoft is not giving away too much about the sales figures for HoloLens but goes as far as saying it is "in thousands, not hundreds of thousands". From a report: Speaking at educational technology event the Bett Show in London on Thursday, Roger Walkden, Senior Director and Commercial Lead of HoloLens, acknowledged that the price tag was partly responsible for the small number of sales. Interestingly, though, Microsoft is not bothered by what could be seen as disappointing sales, despite the fact that the company seems to be betting big on HoloLens by adding headset settings in recent Windows 10 Insider builds. [...] But for anyone who feels let down by what HoloLens has to offer, there is good news: "this is version one, and there will be future versions."
Class action lawsuit!!!
Doesn't sell huge numbers.
News at 11.
I have a Hololens and while it's cool, it's still pretty rough. The field of view is ridiculously small and the price tag is way too high.
I have a lot of experience developing on mobile and embedded devices and find the MS tool chain to be a pain in the ass. I do admit that I'm pretty baised against MS for just about anything though.
I have a meeting with a defense contractor next month about a possible project using the Hololens so it might be useful for something. If not, it will sit on the shelf next to my Powerglove.
I have tried the hololens for corporate use and it's impressive but it have some major drawbacks. The field of view is very small and needs to increase ninefold for the hololens to be really useful outside niche applications. The hololens also have limited use outdoor, it's lasers have limited detection range and it doesn't work in Sunlight.
Right now, VR seems more useful but that might change.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Roger Walkden, Senior Director and Commercial Lead of HoloLens, acknowledged that the price tag was partly responsible for the small number of sales.
Up until fairly recently, most news about the HoloLens seemed to present it as some sort of far-off research project, with little hope of a commercial product you could actually ever buy. That impression has probably contributed to a lack of hype and development of third-part applications, too.
Pence gets to say something?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, it's half baked and under heavy development. But if you disallow the release now, you pretty much make development grind to a halt. The only application that will get any widespread use is entertainment. And that in turn is heavily dependent on independent developers, since no AAA studio is going to drop money on something they eventually cannot sell.
Look at 3D. Yes, it failed. But did it fail after the first failed implementation? Not by a long shot. It was a gimmicky, overhyped crap in the 50s, made a return in the 80s, now for TV, got revived in the 90s and again in the last few years with 3D TVs and shutter glasses. And it failed EVERY SINGLE TIME. And it was revived over and over again with the promise that now we got new technology that makes it viable.
Yes, the current batch of VR toys will fail eventually. But VR in itself won't. Or, at the very least, it will not fail forever due to it. It will again become an issue in a few years. And again. And again. It's something that people want, it's something that can be marketed, being "inside the action" is something people want.
They will jump onto it the next time it comes around. And then again the next time after that failed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't see why people think AR has more uses than VR. Overlaying something on reality is not only less useful but also much more difficult to program for.
You are mistaking what this is. It is not a VR headset and frame rate doesn't apply in the same as it would on a VR headset. It is an augmented reality headset. It scans the environment around you in order to make a real-time 3d model so that virtual objects can be overlaid on the real items you are seeing.
From what I have heard, it works surprisingly well, it just has a small range of view. Presumably this is because of the high processing requirements of creating and maintaining a stable real-time 3d model.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
The thing costs a fortune. And even if it didn't, there are some pretty obvious limitations to what you can do with AR especially when it requires wearing a dorky helmet.
Doesn't sell huge numbers.
News at 11.
This. It's intentionally priced to keep end users away to keep it fairly low-key while devs are figuring out what they can do with it and MS is working the bugs out. Did anyone expect them to sell hundreds of thousands of them?
Is making every story a hyperbolic click-bait crapfest the new normal now across the board? I mean, it's been building with politics but it seems that it's becoming pervasive in tech reporting now as well.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
It's not the price of the thing. If it was 5K per eye rolling at 120 fps .. it would have sold at $1000 each. VR done properly would be a mega hit.
A) it's AR, not VR. It's very different from the Rift and Vive
B) It's priced at $3,000 for the Dev kit, $5,000 for the commercial suite.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
....."Is making every story a hyperbolic click-bait crapfest the new normal now across the board?"
I would say we have long past that time and we are all worse off for it.
Because not walking into walls is good.
Have you actually tried the vive or the rift?
If you tried one of the two, and it made you sick, especially if it was immediate sickness, then it's not the headset's fault, you are just one of the small percentage of people that simply can't handle VR (my mom is like this, she gets sick with 30 seconds). You will probably never be able to use VR in your lifetime, regardless of how far the technology advances, unless you either take medication or start building up a tolerance.
It's pretty extreme to say that VR should be banned by the government just because YOU personally don't like it.
VR has really only two uses- games and training sims. AR has a whole world of purposes- as many as you can think up. A whole universe of meta-information exists about everything you see, and can be displayed on demand.
Granted it will be difficult to do well. But in the end VR will be for entertainment, AR will eventually integrate with every facet of your life.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You really have two choices when it comes to new environments like this:
1)You and a handful of picked producers come up with amazing intial content for the device and sell it with perhaps a limited initial niche.
2)You crowdsource developing content to the masses and make it easy for developers to write awesome apps, and count on that converting into sales.
It costs way too much for route 2- you really need to be sub-1K. The costs are in line for route 1, but then you aren't usually selling anything to the public at all- at least not until the content is done. They don't seem to know what they're doing here... or they plan on this being a tech demo for a few iterations.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
maybe they can send Stephen Elop to build up the core ecosystem.
Just as they were not bothered by poor sales in the mobile space? Consider yourself middle-fingered, Microsoft.
I still don't see the use of such a gadget. As it stands right now, 3D TVs are out of production. Google Glass is gone. We all have multiple devices with multiple operating systems, with data thrown at us all the time in 2D. I don't know that, in general, people can handle much more than we have right now. Is there really a market for this thing beyond some niche video gamers or maybe some kind of high-end flight trainers?
This is more right then you think.
Airline Mechanics have asked for this kind of thing since the 90s. The idea that they could look at a part of a plane and for information to be made available for it. Anything form the correct torq on a bolt to a part number for inventory checks and stock reordering. This use case goes far far past Planes to. Industrial repair and maintenance when the lockout system is both physical and digital can allow for much better repair safety. Oil processing safety measures are lists so long they get glossed over, but a computer overlay can look at an object and say its a confined space and it's hot, and then recommend safety measures to be taken in a context friendly way.
Giving a front line worker all of this information in a context friendly way can be a game changer for a lot of industrial processes.
For me the price is a large factor, but also being first gen tech. Version 2 should be all manna and honey, right? RIGHT?!
Not only the price is insane, you cannot resell or rent it out either. And there's no warranty. At least in America since in civilised countries those types of EULAs are illegal.
So basically if you Buy one for 3000$ It turns out it's a broken piece of garbage then you're fucked, you cannot even rent it out for others to form similar opinion. that's why there are no reviews, who'd buy such thing for such price and then throw it into garbage?
Also, how many could they sell? 2?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Now can anyone think of the down sides to this?
advertising will be changed
I found one.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?