Microsoft’s HoloLens has been a huge hit among gamers, showing some truly impressive demos and promising a future of augmented reality magic. While the device is certainly aimed at gamers in the long term, according to an interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that won’t come in the first version.
Speaking with ZDNet, Nadella was asked about the gaming potential of HoloLens, which has wowed gamers with displays of Minecraft running in an augmented reality world. He responded “For sure in the first version, it’s going to be more about developers and enterprise scenarios.”
However, this doesn’t mean that enterprise users are the only target, as Nadella explains, “I did buy Minecraft to create a new genre of gaming for mixed reality. We bought Minecraft for many reasons: because it’s the number one PC app; it’s the number one console app; it’s the number one paid mobile app on iOS and Android. I wanted a hit game even for the new medium of mixed reality. And we will have that. Gaming will always be a scenario and there will be other entertainment broadly. But, with the V.1 of HoloLens, I want us to push a lot more of the enterprise usage.”
“In general Microsoft’s approach will be always this dual-use focus, or this multi-focus,” Nadella continued. “What we can uniquely do is bridge consumer to enterprise. That’s in our DNA. That’s why it’s even in our mission statement of empowering people and organizations. I want every technology of ours to seek that out. In the HoloLens case, when I look at the interest, it’s amazing how many are in hospitals, healthcare, retail. That’s where I’m seeing the interest and we’ll definitely go after it.”
Indeed the latest demo of the HoloLens was more focused on these enterprise users, such as doctors and hospitals. It was also the first demo to show the constrained field of view that many hands-on reports, including our own, were referencing.
Most other videos for HoloLens have seemingly promised a wide FOV, full of augmented reality holograms, but this smaller FOV is still pretty great, especially for the uses that Microsoft seems to be tailoring the device for. Perhaps HoloLens Version 2 and beyond can remedy some of these shortcomings and make the current promises a reality.
