Isn't that kind of the point of having a research division? Let the research people go crazy with new ideas, then sift through them and figure out what to make of that, product-wise?
It's not like MS Research hasn't delivered some cool stuff, but Microsoft was either not capable or not interested in turning that stuff into products. At least that is the impression I get.
Now just look at VR on the other hand... there's many big companies investing in that and there's a lot of hype around it. Heck even Facebook is on board and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen. There's yet another technological revolution that they're missing out on.
I don't think that Microsoft is missing out on the VR revolution: I think that all this time Microsoft has been trying to baby step/bootstrap their way towards some very cool things. I think it's useful to take a step back and appreciate the incremental/evolutionary approach Microsoft has been taking here. I still think it's kind of brilliant that MS/MSR was able to use gaming to commoditize the Kinect (what was a lab's worth of sensors is now available in every Wal-Mart for a reasonable cost).