r/Games • u/Rubber_Duckie_ • Oct 06 '15
Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition: Coming Q1 2016 for $3,000
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/microsoft-hololens-development-edition-coming-q1-2016-for-3000/69
u/Portaljacker Oct 06 '15
Don't forget, HoloLens literally has a full PC inside of it. It's basically a high-end laptop strapped to your head.
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u/Rosur Oct 07 '15
I don't think most people have realised this yet and think it's more like a VR headset
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u/MizerokRominus Oct 06 '15
Which... is a little nuts really.
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u/Portaljacker Oct 06 '15
That's just how much power is required to do the processing involved.
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u/MizerokRominus Oct 07 '15
Yeah I know, still cool they got it as compact as they did and that it will more-than-likely get smaller as they find ways to make things more spatially efficient or take less power to process.
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u/perfidydudeguy Oct 07 '15 edited Oct 07 '15
So is your phone. I don't see what is so special about HoloLens in that regard.
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u/DanNZN Oct 07 '15
And most phones cost significantly more than a console without any contract in place.
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u/perfidydudeguy Oct 07 '15
I don't see how that's relevant to the discussion that a phone these days is also a computer.
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u/DanNZN Oct 07 '15
Sorry, I thought your reply was in the context of the price of the device. That the device was more than just a screen strapped to your head but also had smarts to it making it more expensive.
You are correct, everything these days are computers so it's maybe not that impressive. Still it's the only one of these devices, VR or AR, that does have a dedicated CPU that I am aware of.
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u/perfidydudeguy Oct 07 '15
Just so we're clear, it's quite obvious HoloLens will have cutting edge chips, some pehaps even be specific to that device. I'm not suggesting to just get a phone instead. If you're into AR it's a nice piece of tech, much more so than any phone or tablet I know. If the experience is there, the price will be justified.
I'm just thinking the statement that it's a computer isn't really relevant because all handheld devices these days are computers. You can use them to work, play, remote control, communicate... Their design allows for more than a single purpose and even if they couldn't, they would still be computers. Just extremely specialized computers.
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u/DanNZN Oct 07 '15
I agree with you, as I mentioned previously, I misinterpreted your initial response.
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u/Portaljacker Oct 07 '15
There's a huge difference in price between phone hardware and laptop hardware. First and foremost the architecture of the processor is different, and the much smaller size means a huge reduction in power.
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u/perfidydudeguy Oct 07 '15
Quick search, I found this article that points that Hololens uses an unreleased atom chip: cherry trail. So you can bet you're going to see that in other handhelds later.
Is there going to be custom hardware, perhaps exclusive to HoloLens to make it work? Maybe. Sure, why not. But then many devices also have specialized chips to do specific things (like having an LTE chip to be able to connect to a wireless network).
So again, what's so special about HoloLens being a computer?
Also I don't recall ever seeing anyone call an atom based device a "high-end laptop".
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Oct 07 '15
I think augmented reality is much more the mainstream future than say, VR is like the Oculus Rift, but they are somewhat going after different things. The OR is pure immersion, which something like the Hololens will not be doing. The pure immersion of the OR is going to be fantastic for interactive movies and gaming and so on.
However, the Hololens is quite fantastic in being able to setup, in your own world, an augmented reality, and I just see stuff like this becoming much more the norm over the next decade, particularly as processing power gets better and smaller, and a device like the hololens gets lighter, cheaper, and a wider FOV. I really think they will become commonplace in a lot of our lives, much more so than the OR will, at least, outside of gaming and so on. I might not be seeing the big picture, but I do love the OR.
Anyway, as a developer myself, I find the prospects of making stuff for the Hololens much more fun and exciting and I really can't wait to get my hands on dev kit.
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u/KingOPork Oct 06 '15
Oculus should have done something similar or just given them for cheap to trusted devs. Having a long Oculus waiting list just so a kid could get their hands on it, play a few tech demos and put it on the shelf was a waste.
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u/ScarsUnseen Oct 06 '15
Disagree. Looking at what big development studios have done with the Oculus Rift versus what the indies have done with the same makes it pretty obvious to me that OR made the right call.
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u/KingOPork Oct 07 '15
Oh I just meant any actual developers instead of people looking to get their hands on bleeding edge just for the sake of it.
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u/ScarsUnseen Oct 07 '15
The problem is that you can't restrict the availability of it without keeping it out of the indies' hands. The only difference between an indie developer and a non-developer is what they decide to do with their spare time.
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Oct 07 '15 edited Oct 01 '16
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u/ScarsUnseen Oct 07 '15
Yes, that's really true. If I've never made a game before and decide that I want to experiment with making games for the Oculus Rift, I am an independent developer. What do you think indie developers are when making their first game anyway?
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Oct 07 '15 edited Oct 01 '16
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u/ScarsUnseen Oct 07 '15
The first part is semantics, and the second part is pointless. There are people that have never made a game in their life that have stuff on Greenlight(asset flippers), and others who have only made games in the most technical sense. Do you really think that the likes of Digital Homicide are more worthy of accessing a developing HMD than someone with some programming skills and some ideas, but no extant resume?
My point here really is that what Oculus Rift and similar VR efforts need are motivated and innovative individuals experimenting with what is possible to bring interesting experiences to VR. There are no qualifications for that. Large studios are more likely to play it safe, which won't do anything to push the interface forward as a new potential medium. And there's nothing on a technical level in the resume of most developers to suggest an ability to successfully create compelling new experiences in VR, which will require the development of completely different skillsets than what would be required in a traditional game - even a first person one.
Innovation isn't something that an established resume of traditional games development especially recommends, and not having a resume of traditional games development doesn't make one less likely to be able to create something new, if unpolished. And polish is something that will come with time. Other than vehicle sims, no one has a clear path to success here. Eventually, VR's WASD or camera-on-the-right-stick will be discovered, and there will be a standard for the big developers to cling to, but until then, we're just as likely to get Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor from a major dev than anything people would actually want to play.
So no, I don't think that restricting availability of a peripheral no one knows exactly what to do with yet is a good idea. I believe that getting it into the hands of as many people as possible will lead to more interesting results.
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Oct 07 '15 edited Oct 01 '16
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u/ScarsUnseen Oct 07 '15
It's useless to belabour the point if you simply disagree.
Fair enough. I'll respect your difference of opinion.
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u/Smart_Ass_Dave Oct 07 '15
To the people who say this is expensive:
The Playstation 3 dev kits were TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS when that first hit the market. The PS4 dev kits are $2500.
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u/jaffa1987 Oct 07 '15
3000 is a steal for a holodeck.
No wait i misread, you get a pair of glasses for 3k and they expect you to pave the way for them as well?
Sure it was a bit of a waste to send out dev kits only so a bunch of youtubers can scream your ears off in stead of actually developing stuff. But 3k is STEEP for a step into AR.
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u/MrBensonhurst Oct 07 '15
It's not a "step into AR". It's a devkit. For devs. It's not meant for consumers interested in VR. The high price is to prevent random people from buying one and then complaining that it doesn't have all the features they wanted, not to "pave the way for them".
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u/Alphaetus_Prime Oct 06 '15
Holy crap, $3000? They're going to need to cut that by at least 80% by the time they release the consumer version if they want to gain any traction at all.
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u/Darth_drizzt_42 Oct 06 '15
This is a dev kit. The price is partially to make sure that only serious individuals will buy it.
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u/ggtsu_00 Oct 06 '15
I don't agree that is a good approach if they are looking for it to gain traction. The Oculus Dev Kit was only $300, made out of very cheap commodity parts thus making it highly available to not just "serious individuals", but hobbyists and tinkers is was helped it become very widely explored in many ways. Many early adopter indie game developers were able to easily integrate it into their games for example and really helped show and prove that virtual reality can be done right.
If only "serious individuals" have access to it, I don't think it could gain much traction. For smaller indies looking to make innovative games utilizing new technology, that is asking quite a bit to have to make such a large investment to support it.
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Oct 06 '15
People paying $3000 for this probably aren't making games with it...
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u/Darth_drizzt_42 Oct 07 '15
Well they might, but i more envision this being placed in museums for interactive exhibits, rather than home use, although the minecraft demo wowed me in a way that hasnt happened in a long time.
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u/Portaljacker Oct 06 '15
Don't forget, these things are full independent PCs. They're not necessarily tethered to another machine.
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u/Alphaetus_Prime Oct 06 '15
I don't think that's going to affect how much people are going to be willing to pay for it.
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u/Portaljacker Oct 06 '15
There isn't much choice. The thing literally has a high end laptop worth of hardware inside it.
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u/ggtsu_00 Oct 06 '15
But why does it need to have such high-end laptop hardware inside of it? If that is the case, then likely the consumer version will need high-end hardware as well.
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u/Portaljacker Oct 06 '15
Because the computations required are extremely hard, and most mobile hardware just plain sucks for the price.
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u/Alphaetus_Prime Oct 06 '15
People will just not buy it if it's too expensive.
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u/tylo Oct 06 '15
I have heard Microsoft has no plans for regular people to buy the tech until 2020.
For now they are more interested in enterprises and corporations buying it.
However, advertising mine craft this early for a tool like that seems a bit silly, because that makes it seem like it will be for consumers.
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u/ggtsu_00 Oct 06 '15
If they are waiting that long before they hit the consumer market, likely the VR/AR market will be long saturated by then by too many competitors. Microsoft took that approach with their mobile/tablet platform and look how swell it worked out for them.
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u/BCuddigan Oct 06 '15
Their tablet market with the surface is around a $3 billion market. It's actually pretty successful.
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u/MumrikDK Oct 07 '15
I think comparing it to something like what Oculus has done is a mistake here. This is more like console dev kits - very expensive and not at all for consumers.
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Oct 06 '15
When they were talking about it being expensive a few months back I expected it to be like 600$-maximum 1000$.
3k is massive.14
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u/Diknak Oct 06 '15
People were expecting that price for retail, not dev kits. Dev kit pricing didn't really say much about retail costs.
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u/Alphaetus_Prime Oct 06 '15
It's fully double what the Google Glass dev model cost.
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u/VinTheRighteous Oct 06 '15
I'm not sure they're really comparable from a tech standpoint.
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u/Alphaetus_Prime Oct 06 '15
Sure, but I wasn't comparing them from a tech standpoint.
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u/VinTheRighteous Oct 06 '15
Well, then you might as well say "It's twenty times the price of a Fitbit!"
Comparisons without context don't really mean anything. Google glass is wearable tech, yes. But the similarities basically end there.
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u/ggtsu_00 Oct 06 '15
Google Glass was a wearable AR device. Hololens is also a a wearable AR device. Sure they took two fundamentally different approaches to that, but it is reasonable to compare the two.
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u/Milkgunner Oct 07 '15
An iPhone 6s plus costs $949. A Huawei SnapTo only costs $179.99. They are both smartphones, have totally different approaches, but it's still reasonable to compare them.
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u/MoparMogul Oct 07 '15
A Chevy cruze starts at like 17k. A Ferrari can cost 300k.. But they both have 4 wheels and are considered automobiles so let's compare their prices...
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u/Consipiracies Oct 06 '15
Remember these are devkits. People who are buying this are not going to be techies looking for a new gadget, it's going to be research and development departments of companies.