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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me like if they wanted to buy it, they would have done so at a much earlier stage. Their hardware and labs teams seem pretty on the ball to me and would likely be already experimenting with this stuff. I have to guess that they already have something in the oven (VR is a natural match for Kinect) and didn't feel like shelling out a ton of money for something their eggheads were already cracking the code to.

My guess is we'll see a competing VR product from microsoft at next year's E3 or a little before - watch and learn from Sony's overexposed rollout and maybe even nab a few dudes from the Oculus team who want to continue hacking and don't like the Facebook creep.

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I think the "if they wanted to they would have argument" misses some nuance of how business actually works. The impression from the stories available was that this deal was inked very quickly. I think that people at Microsoft are probably equally as stunned as the rest of us that this company was acquired. People from Facebook were actively hanging out at Oculus and watching development, you don't get the impression that other companies had this type of access.

I wouldn't be to fast to leap to expecting a Microsoft competitor. The botched Sony launch combined with uncertainty about this purchase by Facebook may make them more likely to pursue other products in the next year and avoid seeming like a band-waggoner.

Knowing how corporations work, I think it's more likely that MS doesn't really have anything in the works.

VR is a funny technology. It's been around a very long time, and attempts keep being made and failing. That means that most big labs probably have had long running programs. A problem with such projects is that once they build up some codebase or knowledge base, it becomes very very hard to start fresh or change directions.

I think the Sony project suffers from this, the product really is not in the same league as Oculus, both in hardware specs and the software/UI support. It feels like one of those clunky early MP3 players vs. the iPod.

I'd doubt this. Hardware requires a supply chain and the suppliers try to sell to everyone, at least initially. The same guys that sell to Sony, sell to Microsoft, sell to Oculus, etc and there's a data exchange of 'what's coming next' in this manner. As soon as you know an idea is possible, reaching into the supply chain can help you link pieces together to get what you need (hardware, software, engineers, etc.) to create a working product.

I'd bet that if Microsoft knows about VR, cares about VR, believes in VR, they have working VR.

Good points. It could be a case similar to iPod. The supply chain is there, and the parts are there, someone just needs to come along and show us how to tie it all together; and show us that it's not OK to: 1) ignore industrial design, 2) optimize for lowest price, 3) ignore software integration/UI. Once that happens get ready for a flood of copycats.

I think the concept of augmented reality that things like google glass offers a greater chance of finding purchase over any fully immerse environment short of one that operates in something akin to dream space.

Well, they're different markets. The full VR experience targets core gamers. The AR experience better ties into the modern mobile revolution.

Even if I weren't playing a fully AR game, I'd want something semi-transparent if I were playing on the train. Completely shutting off my eyes in transit would be weird.

You are expecting too much from Nadella. He is not the kind of CEO who would be brave enough to pursue something before it becomes an obvious success, which will be already too late.

> maybe even nab a few dudes

Hate to nitpick, but let's not forget about the awesome women engineers and designers out there, including at Oculus.

I use the term dude to refer to people of all genders, sexes, and persuasions

To be honest, I was in a bad mood when I wrote that and made a negative assumption about what you wrote. I'm sorry. I wish HN would let me take that one back.

well since it was directed mainly at me and I've done the same thing plenty of times, consider it taken back!

stop turning everything into a gender debate.

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