Microsoft has been slowly building up its mixed reality endeavor, by baking in support for the platform in its latest Windows 10 updates, as well as the recent announcements of actual HMDs from hardware partners like HP and Acer. Acer's solution, their Mixed Reality HMD, will ship to developers and customers with a $400 price-tag for both the headset and a pair of 6 DoF controllers, which easily remind users of HTC's Vive and Oculus's Rift controllers. Microsoft's implementation, however, makes away with the Rift's and Vive's ouside-in trackers, only needing to be within "sight" of the sensors on the front of the HMD to which they're connected, thus making them truly world-scale (if at the expense of some sweet swordplay moves, but I digress.)This hardware support and ecosystem which Microsoft is building up will stand side by side with the company's HoloLens project, offering a more VR-like environment than the later. This naturally begs the question of what exactly is Microsoft trying to achieve with these HMDs. I think the answer to that can be found on Microsoft's upcoming Scorpio Xbox console and it's VR aspirations, which the company has been quietly touting. Microsoft seems to be slightly paving the way for HMD support on the Scorpio, while simultaneously baking in support for it on Windows. And the feature proximity between Microsoft's HMD specifications (which still fall towards third party production, like HP's and Acer's implementation) likely means that Microsoft is looking to cater to the same audiences with its VR efforts.

Reporting on his Microsoft Build experiences and talks with Microsoft personnel, Tom's Hardware's Seth Colaner reports that while no direct answer to the first-party titles was liberated, the tone and expectations from Microsoft employees was that something is coming this E3. And the fact that Microsoft's Mixed Reality HMDs are expected to support both Xbox Scorpio and Windows computers, alongside further investment on the Play Anywhere feature, could mean some more franchise cross-platforming... Perhaps we'll be able to play Halo 6 or The Master Chief Collection on our Windows PCs with the game's HUD displaying on our HMD?