Polygon: Microsoft Suspends HoloLens Consumer Release Because of Kinect Failure

The designer of Microsoft's Hololens augmented reality system, Alex Kipman, revealed that he's pumping the brakes on launching a consumer version of the product. The main reason, he told reporters at a TED conference in Vancouver, was because Microsoft has been badly burned by the failure of the Kinect, Recode reports.

While a $3,000 version of the Hololens is available for businesses and developers right now, Kipman says they're holding back on a consumer version for the foreseeable future.

"When I feel the world is ready, then we will allow normal people to buy it," Kipman said. "It could be as soon as we say 'yes,' and it could be as long as a 'very long time.'"

But, he said, being ready means more than just having great hardware; it means having enough content to make it of lasting use.

“If a consumer bought it today, they would have 12 things to do with it,” Kipman said. “And they would say ‘Cool, I bought a $3,000 product that I can do 12 things with and now it is collecting dust.'”

POLYGON

It might be for the best to hold off a bit- they can get the bugs and kinks ironed out, and also have a 'second generation product' launch as the first generation one on the market, and get a running start- but this does bum me out, I like what I have seen of HoloLens.

Wait they were going to release it to the public?

Hopefully by then they can get the price down. Better be offering something really awesome for that much money

The smear campaign is still going strong.

That's too bad but it makes perfect sense, and at that price it won't do well in the mainstream at all.

I'm very excited with what I have seen so far. It's funny actually if anyone here watches the Joe Rogan podcasts, they were raving about it recently because I think they saw it during one of those Ted talk things if I'm not mistaken. It's like the stuff we saw in the movie Minority Report. Right now though, it is just a technical curiosity with little use at the personal level.

just how soon did they plan on releasing this to the general public?next year?

The plan was SDKs for this year, a late 2016-2017 release for the consumer device.

I, for one, am okay with them pushing back the consumer release. The Tech for both VR and AR is too expensive, and they're only targeting to enterprise for now.

The big problem with it right now is that there's no software support. The Hololense isn't designed to be a gaming peripheral the way Oculus and Vive are. While there are consumer and entertainment applications they are really targeting industrial industries and other commercial applications. Hololense bears a lot more resemblance to Google Glass than a VR solution, and not just because it's an AR versus VR tool. The usefulness of the device will hinge entirely on what software applications they can come up with for it, and at the moment it's a three thousand dollar tool that doesn't really do very much (much like the Microsoft Surface tables before they stole the "Surface" name for their tablet PCs). The Surface was a neat idea, but they never wrote more than a dozen or so apps for it and very few of them had any practical use. Nice to a cheap toy, but not for a five thousand dollar computer.

-Byshop

I'm all for them slamming on the breaks to make this thing streamlined and do it right. It's not like we're missing something that's not currently on the market, so let them iron out the details.

That is correct. HoloLens was never intended for pure gaming experience but rather just field work. I do a lot of charting at my job, so I would like to try HoloLens out which is why I was interested in the first place but this is a wise move by MS to suspend this until AR is 99.8% ready.

That's probably what they are telling the press, but the field of view on the thing is terribad.

In all fairness, businesses and designers will get much more mileage out of it than a consumer ever will.

More bad news for lems :(

How is this Bad news? It's not meant for gaming, it was meant for Enterprise!

Xbox

Kinect

Hololens

M$ is the worst hardware developer...EVER.

This is a good move. See what happens with VR and react accordingly.

This seems like something that would be much too expensive right now anyway.

On the practicality of it, it looks cool, much cooler than Kinect and VR but I still don't know what use it will be to traditional games.

lol what a moron, the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book were both praised, have high scores from sites like PCMag and the Surface Pro 4 just won ban award for best tablet. Dumbass

Some reason I already thought it'd been established there were no widespread commercial applications and that it'd specially be a business product.

Kinect, the gift that keeps on giving. Even in death the Kinect is still destroying gamers hopes and dreams.

Lol M$ peasant. Get a Mac and live the true dream.

Member Since:February 23, 2016Posts:9

Aww look another M$ shill alt account.

Failure and the Xbox brand. Why am I not surprised by this?

Kinect, Xbone, Hololens, all MS hardware related to gaming and all flops.

Who was supposed to be the market for a $3000 gimmick anyway? Does M$ just assume everyone is rich?

$3000 is the price for a development kit, and this was aimed for Enterprise businesses, not gaming! Get it right!

Saving the Hololens for the 2019 launch of the Xbox Two.

Sigh...... It's not meant to be a gaming device.......

Le Sigh... It's not meant to be taken serious...

Hahahahahaha

I'm just tired :-(

Tired? It's been known to happen...for humans.

@SolidTy said:

@FireEmblem_Man said:

@SolidTy said:

@FireEmblem_Man said:

@SolidTy said:

Saving the Hololens for the 2019 launch of the Xbox Two.

Sigh...... It's not meant to be a gaming device.......

Le Sigh... It's not meant to be taken serious...

I'm just tired :-(

Tired? It's been known to happen...for humans.

Well, you're right, I'm sleepy tired and can't function well on my work. It sucks working 2nd shift night jobs.....

I said this would happen. MS will not risk trying to innovate with hardware for gamers now.

But hey, it's what the gamers wanted.

The original Xbox One with a built in Kinect for everyone would have been cool differentiating it from being a watered down PC. Consoles are just really boring to me now.

Although the Wii U looks interesting though, should have gotten that.

Business versions of devices cost more. They make them in smaller quantities and they're customised. Devices cost less for consumers, because they make and sell so many, the costs are spread out.

For example, supermarkets use devices called HHTs (Handheld Terminals) Which is possibly less advanced than a DS, but with a barcode scanner. The thing costs upwards of £800 per unit.

It's also why medical equipment cost so much too.

I hope you don't think that "demo" you saw at E3 2015 was real. That was as fake as Milo.

I would love to see how they planned to water down a $3000 product to mass market price in year...and how it would function. They are just avoiding another guaranteed flop.

Yeah you should have bought the product that was DOA two years after launch with awful support...most people don't care about gimmicks. Something traditional that works is what the average consumer wants.

I can't believe it !!!

I refuse to believe this news because some lemming have told me that MS is incredibly rich and don't care about loses and will keep a product alive no matter what.

WTF lol...

I see you took your inner lemming for a stroll today..lol

Innovative.?

Kinect like VR,the eye toy an hololens were all gimmicks,controlling your game with either would be pretty sad,hell Kinect is as shallows as it can be controls wise,you don't have room for much because you are hold back by a tech that doesn't really work that well,now i am no just talking about Kinect i feel the same way about sony's VR or other VR out there.

I see you still bitter that i owned you sorry buns..hahahahaaa

But but but MY TV can play PS3 games,yeah probably when your drunk and have loss touch with reality.. hahahaahaaaaaa

LOL

Why would someone buy it now?

You and your lemming BS. Xbox is redundant now. Consoles for me are redundant multiplat players. I wanted something that was different.

All gimmicks are more or less DOA when the market is segregated, they have to be built in, otherwise developers can't do anything meaningful with them, too much of a financial risk. You have NO idea what could have been, no one does. Price was the problem with the original concept.

We didn't need watered more down PCs which is essentially what the Xbox One and PS4 are.

Have you really got any faith left after Assault Horizon and Infinity?

I've been playing Ace Combat 6 regularly since 2007. It still tops my Xbox 360 game pile above all else.

They essentially dump Kinect games and Xbox Entertainment Studios , and then suspend Hololens? Ouch. The Flopbox One was built on some of these promises. I'm surprised this shitty system is even over 10 million sold. People are gullible I guess. Heads in the clouds.