According to a report by Fortune magazine, which has since been pulled for being published ahead of schedule, Microsoft’s HoloLens headset will be available for pre-order on the 29th of February for $3,000 (Development Edition). The report also states that the HoloLens Development Edition will launch March 30th. Here’s a snippet of the Fortune blog post:
Kudo Tsunoda, corporate vice president at Microsoft, announced through a blog post today that Fragments, Young Conker, and RoboRaid (previously demonstrated at E3 as Project X-Ray) will be included with the hardware to showcase the gaming capabilities that augmented reality opens up. Early purchasers of the new hardware will include game developers, and Microsoft is looking to create an ecosystem of software that will help it sell the consumer version of HoloLens down the line.
HoloLens will include several non-gaming related apps to assist developers, including HoloStudio — a tool to create 3D resources — and an enhanced version of Skype allowing anyone running Skype on Windows “to interact with the holographic world.” ActionGram, which we learned about just the other day, will arrive later this year and allows one to tell a holographic story. There is also an app called HoloTour, which lets users walk around specific locations like Rome’s city streets, complete with 3D sound.
A leaked video showcasing the HoloLens user interface leaked onto the internet a few days ago giving us a close-up look at what it’s like to use the device. You can check out that video here.
“This type of communication has enormous potential in both the consumer and business world,” Tsunoda wrote. “It will allow developers to communicate with each other using the holographic medium to share development methods and seek the advice of others. With Skype, you can see the holograms the other person is seeing and you can use holograms to illustrate helpful techniques or development approaches. It is our hope that the holographic development community will be just that—a community.”
We’ll have more on this as it develops. Our own Kip actually went hands-on with the HoloLens early last year, and you can read his experiences here. We fully expect to hear more about the HoloLens at this year’s Build developer conference and we’ll be at the event live.
