http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/microsoft-e3-2009-conference-narta-the-new-phantom/

The ‘motion controller’ is announced and, sure enough, it is cameras. Steven Spielberg was brought on the stage and say, almost verbatim, meaning WORD FOR WORD,Reggie’s exact same sentences from E3 2006. “The controller is the barrier.” “Everyone has read a book. Everyone has watched a movie. But not everyone has played a video game.” “Most households do not have a video game console.” Motion control aside, in terms of pure stagecraft, this is absolutely hilarious just repeating exact lines that Nintendo execs said three years ago.

Microsoft is the king of vaporware. Remember Longhorn? Yeah. The reason why Microsoft is the king of vaporware is because Microsoft is primarily a marketing company. Its traditional business model is selling to computer manufacturers, not customers. Microsoft’s response to Vista was, as you can guess, throwing money into marketing.

When Microsoft was being hit after bad news after bad news, when their stock was being hit due to poor decisions, Microsoft stopped the bleeding by unleashing the ‘Microsoft Surface Table’ or whatever it is called. It was a table with a standard computer in it with a camera facing up. The marketing blared that it was “Minority Report come to life.” Many of the press easily bought into it. News stories began to be released saying, “Microsoft on technological edge, making Minority Report type table,” and so on.

Since Microsoft has hit the wall in getting more people to buy its console, it must resort to limiting how many people can buy the Wii. The best way to do that is have marketing, with willing accomplices in the press, that Microsoft is poised to revolutionize all gaming, all motion controls… in a couple of years. This is to prevent people from buying a Wii. When a couple years come by, the device still will not be out. Microsoft will just keep up the marketing trumpet of ‘anyday, it will be released and it will CHANGE everything! Just wait! You’ll see!’.

Note how there is no release date. This is because it will never be released (aside from one or two for marketing purposes at a news channel or Disneyland). Why announce something that isn’t going to be released? This is Microsoft. They do it all the time.

While many companies announce projects that they are unable to deliver (vaporware), Microsoft has developed a technique to use vaporware as a type of illusion when it cannot compete against the current product or have no near product in development that can compete. These ‘illusionary cards’, naturally, are always shown to be way better than anything ever made. It is to buy Microsoft time. In the 1990s, all Microsoft had to do was announce Cairo and keep delaying it. A more recent example would be with Longhorn. And by the time Longhorn got released, it was nothing near what was marketed when it was an illusionary product. Longhorn just mimicked OS X when it was released as ‘Vista’. And I’ve already mentioned the ‘Microsoft Surface’, which is nothing more than a $10,000 table with a camera inside, that has to be practically given away since no one wants to buy it (most likely because it doesn’t exist as a product). To counter this, Microsoft has various organizations use the device to create an illusion that it is about to be released… any time now… really… Announced in 2007, the silly Surface still is in ‘development’. It will not be released in 2010. It will be pushed back furtherand further until it can be pushed back no more. Then, it will suddenly ‘lose features’ and be released as a mediocre product. This is what happened to Cairo and Longhorn/Vista, for example.

Already, some media are framing this ‘Natal’ as a gauntlet thrown down to Wii (which it isn’t). But wait, look at this: Prices and timing weren’t available, but it won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and will probably cost around $200. It is a marketing stunt folks. We may never see this thing released. It appears to the purpose is to create the idea in people’s minds that a better motion control is right around the corner so they better not bother buying a Wii. This is classic Microsoft at work here.

Already posted somewhere, but I'm too lazy to search it.

This article could well be the downfall of Malstrom's supremacy.

Yawn.. How can something which works well be called vapourware? Kid Icarus looks like vapourware in comparison.

Is this the same guy that is usually quoted as a great opinionist regarding all things Wii?
Because what he said about the surface project, about codename Longhorn and about MS vaporware is almost completely silly and shallow. And this comes from someone that is not soft towards MS business practices.

Squilliam,

too expensive or no product functionning with it

also, it is the job of Maelstrom to make damage cnotrol ...

Give some example, please. 

When I saw the announcement, the first thing that came to my mind was exactly the Surface. IT HAD THE SAME TECH-DEMO! The whole "painting with your hands" part, and the "messing with water surface" part, were in it! I tried a Surface model a few months ago, and it was exactly the same as the one presented 2 years ago! I played with the painting, and the water, but there was nothing else. They are sitting on it, and sometimes bringing it up on shows to prove that they are that creative.

Kid Icarus is a rumour, not vaporware. vaporware has to be announced, and then delayed/not mentioned again. but I get your point.

Anyway, this has already had a thread on it, but oh well.

This is the first Malstrom article that I disagree with. Which is a shame because the fact that MS are releasing this is further validation (if any more was needed) that Nintendo made the right decision with the Wii.

I believe it is entirely possible that MS's camera will end up being delayed and integrated with the 720. but to claim that it will never release seems odd

Don't know about "well". I can't trust half-fabricated video with disclaimer "actual features and functionallity may vary" (seriously, the guy scaned his skate through his palm?), the other two games that was actually showed at E3 worked well though. I want to give it a try before judging, Malstrom obviously is to harsh on it. Anyways I think he got the point, not a vaporware, but as I've said somewhere else already - not coming soon.

Let's see what he cites as examples of vaporware:

- Cairo was a set of technologies about information sharing. It never became a product, but it gave birth to the content indexer and search services (currently implemented in real software) and gave birth to the WinFS project, see later.

- Longhorn was the codename for what later became Vista. Some of the developed and previewed technologies saw the light as actual features (revamped video driver subsystem, least privilege security policy, WPF libraries). Others, and most notably WinFS, didn't. But this much touted project for a database-like abstraction layer over the actual filesystem reached alpha stage, developers were actually involved in testing and integrating and was finally cut for performance/compatibility/reliability problems. It was moved to the SQLServer domain and will surely raise once again in a future OS version. It's a good idea whose time has almost come, and similar projects were pursued by open source developers.

- Surface was about experimenting with multitouch interfaces. They are the big thing right now in mobile devices, and are creeping their way in laptops and kiosks. Surely it won't be long before every general-purpose OS will need to be able to deal with multipointer interfaces. That required changes to the Xserver under Linux and to core libraries under OSX. Surely similar libraries were developed for the computer at the heart of Surface, work that will be used in Windows Mobile devices and in future Windows releases. Also, by giving this technology to tech partners as a testing ground for real applications opened the way to experimentation about which human interfaces work and which don't with multitouch.

The fact is that MS mainly caters to developers, and they're damn good at that. Some of it is marketing and hype, but most of it is honest and serious - if not revolutionary - work on the tools.

This Malstrom guy labeled them as vaporware because they didn't end wrapped in a nice package as a product for the final consumer, but that's not what all projects in a big company like MS are about. And having made this mistake, he goes on to extrapolate that we'll never see what MS clearly means to be a real, actual product. Faulty logic based on false assumptions.