Why does Microsoft keep dropping the ball?

Hello all! Long time viewer/listener from “Attack of the Screensavers” days. I’ve been listening to your podcast for years. This is the first time I’m writing in, but with the release of the PSVR2 I wanted to get some opinions on Microsoft outside myself from people in the know.

Is it just me or has Microsoft continually dropped the darn ball while trying to branch out into new areas? I just set up my PSVR2 and found it to be brilliant, but I looked over at my Lenovo Explorer WMR headset and wondered why Microsoft didn’t make WMR work with the Xbox One. They would have been the only headset on the market that could target both Console and PCVR with nothing more than a firmware update. The Xbox One should have been powerful enough as the PS4 worked with the PSVR, and to my understanding WMR handled tracking internally in custom hardware where the PS4 had to do tracking calculations based on the camera. Instead Sony is releasing the second edition of it’s product and Microsoft’s shutting down another product that with just a little foresight would have probably run away with top prize.

I say again because I’ve been a early Microsoft adopter a few times. Here are a few other cases I’ve noticed.

  1. Zune: Late to market with a superior device, but hobbled the Zune with a proprietary physical and communication interface. When most car stereos, USB speakers, and even home theater systems spoke “iPod” or “USB media device” Zune was speaking it’s own protocol. While you could get anything you could imagine with an iPod connector (remember the toilet paper roll holder?) you were lucky to get an overpriced Zune dock. Only Ford with their Microsoft “Sync” system could properly work with the Zune. No after market stereos could. There was one GM stereo that could do it, but that was it. Having a mini USB connector and a standard USB media device functionality would have pushed Zune past the iPod.

  2. Windows Phone 7/8. The phone looked awesome and when I finally got one (Nokia 635) I daily drove it for a year and loved it. I had signed up to be a developer under the $8 program. However when I installed the dev suite and started working through the training documents I realized I couldn’t test my code. The emulator had a hard requirement for a CPU feature set that was only on then very recent Intel CPUs, and no Amd cpus. None of my computers (not even my work laptop) would work. I had to buy a phone, and the budget Windows phone (the Nokia 512 then Nokia 635) didn’t come out for years. Basically I binned that idea and decided to keep working on android, and I suspect many other developers did too.

  3. Windows Media Center: Seriously how poorly advertised was this product? A network capable DVR that was included with windows 7 (yes XP and vista too, but the hoops for XP media center edition were asinine and vista was… well… vista) that turned any Xbox 360 in your home into a networked DVR. You could start a show in one room and continue it elsewhere. Hell you didn’t even need cable TV as it worked with antenna tuners both analog and ATSC. This setup served me well until Microsoft just dropped support and I had to upgrade. Over a decade I saved over $2,000 in DVR rental fees even accounting for building a custom PC with a Ceton cable card tuner. When Microsoft bought and neutered the enthusiast forum “thegreenbutton.net” it basically sounded the beginning of the end.

  4. Windows Home Server: Wow this product was such a good base that would have taken off if Microsoft would have listened to what their early adopters were asking for. The old “Thegreenbutton” forum had requested Windows Media Center support be added directly to WHS. While there was an “integration” it was poor at best. What we had requested was the consumer hardware have the needed TV tuner included in the off the shelf HP boxes, or for DIY builders the ability to run WMC on the WHS box itself eliminating the need for two machines running constantly. Something you can do now with Truenas and a Plex jail.

A recent idea I had that would have turned WHS into the killer Microsoft app would have been as follows. Rename the product “Xbox Drive”, include the TV tuner built in, allow users to use off the shelf hard drives to increase storage as they always could in WHS, but add one more feature. As WHS was a closed Microsoft server allow it’s storage to be used by the Xbox and Xbox 360 as additional space for downloading games purchased online, and allow one download of a game to serve multiple Xbox\Xbox 360’s on the same network. As the Xbox and Xbox 360 could use WMC functionality and the Xbox 360 Arcade had limited internal storage sell the “Xbox Drive” as a all in one solution. While the Arcade was intended to be an entry level low cost Xbox 360, allowing it to use the Xbox Drive would not only allow for it to be more robust, but also expand the penetration of Microsoft devices under TVs.

Honestly Microsoft completely missed the boat on all of these products. While it could be argued that they were early to market and features weren’t established the truth is competitors made their product do some great things. AT&T used a WMC derivative in their U-verse product for years and enabled caller ID on screen. As PC’s had modems that supported Caller ID this should have been a no brainer function, but that wasn’t included or possible without heavy hacking. Zune or Windows Phone integration with WHS and WMC should have been no brainers, but integration was basic at best if at all. More a box checked for Marketing than an actual attempt to make a quality product. Thegreenbutton had posted MUCH of this to Microsoft as suggestions that went ignored.

If Microsoft wants to start recapturing some of these areas they need to stop abandoning previous products. Enable Zune, windows phone, and hell even Windows Mixed Reality support on the Xbox one, and something planned out not half assed. Even though these products are discontinued including support will win back some brand recognition and good will so that when they return to these markets (and Microsoft has announced they want to return to VR/AR at some point) consumers don’t just write them off. Open the Xbox platform to make VR development with WMR quick and easy to encourage people who have WMR headsets gathering dust in a closet to quickly get set up and up to speed developing new apps. While it may sound insane to suggest supporting old products like this it’s exactly what Sony did. While the PSVR2 isn’t backward compatible with the PSVR1’s software, the PS5 supports both platforms. Unfortunately to play all games you need both headsets, but you can do that. Unlike Sony, Microsoft targeted the PCVR market but ignored the console at a time in VR’s development where made sense to target console. In a way it still does especially when you already have headsets in the wild and all it would take is porting the feature. Instead of fragmenting the market on their own platform like Sony did, Microsoft could easily enable WMR, and even consider allowing competitors headsets to work with the Xbox one platform. Have a Vive? A old Oculus Rift? Hey you’re welcome! The good PR of encouraging device reuse instead of creating more e-waste would win serious points. That and suddenly you have a strangely large install base. Enable some form of wireless play like “Virtual Desktop” on the Oculus quest 1 and 2 and suddenly you could just steal Meta’s customers.

While Meta may be the end all be all in the room currently the way they treat security and the general operation of the company means it’s their ball to lose. If Microsoft gets themselves set back up as an open community that’s easy to publish to they could easily steal the ball. That is if they stop shooting themselves in the foot.

Open source WMR. Add VR to the Xbox One/Series. Let the community show you what it can do. Stop abandoning your products after a half assed attempt.

Or am I wrong?