Microsoft doesn’t think Mixed Reality is dead – instead wants more developers on board

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Headset stock may be dwindling, but Microsoft is expanding its Dev Days

(Image credit: Image Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has announced that there will be more Mixed Reality Dev Days for 2020, and not just in the US, but in a couple of other countries too.

Specifically, these events will take place in Redmond, Washington on May 16 and 17 (just before Microsoft’s Build conference), and there will also be events in Germany and Japan. The dates for these European and Asian tours are yet to be confirmed, as are the venues.

Last year, Microsoft also held these Dev Days in May, except only at Redmond (which is where Microsoft’s HQ is based). The idea is to give developers a chance to network, and benefit from various sessions, which in 2019 included a crash course on eye-tracking, as well as sessions on HoloLens 2 (as you’d expect) and developing AR apps among many others.

One developer on Twitter asked if Microsoft would bring the event to France, and the Mixed Reality team hinted that further expansion may be in the cards: “Last year we did the event just in Redmond. This year we decided to do a single event in Europe and Asia as well. We want to take baby steps in growing the event, make sure we get it right, and then we will work on expanding further.”

Headset headwinds

This shows that Microsoft is still keen on pushing Mixed Reality, even if – outside of HoloLens 2 – the actual hardware appears to be dwindling away before our eyes.

If you look at the Windows Mixed Reality headsets which are now sold on the Microsoft Store, there is now only one model offered, at least in the UK and US (when there used to be a number of headsets from different manufacturers on sale). And indeed in the US, the listed Samsung HMD Odyssey+ is out of stock (at the time of writing), so you can’t actually buy one at all.

Further note that Microsoft appears to be taking a cautious approach to VR on console, as we heard recently when Phil Spencer confirmed that the Xbox Series X will not support VR at launch.

Via Thurrott.com

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Darren Allan

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).