
Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores - snake117
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/26/21297400/microsoft-retail-stores-closing-cities-open
======
AlphaWeaver
This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle
(Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable.

I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to
help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky.

Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-
clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to genuinely care
about fixing your issue. Throughout the day, they held tech demos and video
game competitions, and all the kids I saw in the store always seemed to be
enjoying themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a kid visiting the
Microsoft store in the mall was inspired to learn more about computers and
technology based on their experience.

This sucks.

~~~
muststopmyths
Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to
check out various Surfaces in person as well.

I will say, the surfaces/laptops side of the store was usually empty. Some
kids playing with the Xbox or people at the counter getting help seemed to be
the extent of traffic the past couple of years.

They seem to be aggressively destroying any paltry remaining goodwill with
consumer enthusiasts. I'm sure it's great for the bottom line, but is the
ultimate goal to only be competing with Google and AWS on who can run the
cheapest Linux VMs in the cloud ?

~~~
simonh
I don't really see the connection. If the only traffic to the stores was a
handful of people, how can this have any significant effect on customer good
will? They can't be both empty and influential.

It seems like the stores were a missed opportunity, but they always had the
odds stacked against them. Whatever you can get in an MS store, you could get
a much cheaper alternative running the same software at another electronic
goods store or online. I suspect the theoretical opportunity was really a
mirage and never really there.

~~~
ptero
> It seems like the stores were a missed opportunity, but they always had the
> odds stacked against them.

Odds were against Microsoft stores being profitable because Microsoft is now
an underdog in consumer tech. If you want hardware (possibly with the
exception of xbox; I just do not know, never had one), Microsoft is rarely the
name that jumps to mind. But this is exactly why Microsoft should keep them
(using some profits from OS and software), even at a loss, to provide demos
and let folks play with their toys. Not doing this means riding much more on
inertia of existing corporate Windows 10 and Office installations. This is
very profitable and still has a lot of inertia, but abandoning consumer tech
is putting a $1.5 trillion dollar company into a more vulnerable long-term
position.

~~~
simonh
But is it actually serving a purpose if not enough people are actually going
into the stores, at the demos and playing with the toys?

I don't think this is abandoning consumer tech. Their ~90% domination is still
a thing. They gained it without stores, and the stores weren't helping them
maintain it.

There seems to be this cognitive lag where it seems like the stores should be
a big deal, should be significant, giving them up should say something about
Microsoft's position in the industry. A lot of commentary can't shake that
perception. The reality though is it never was any of those things.

~~~
WorldMaker
I think that an interesting part of that lag is directly Windows Phone
related. Phones seem to be the one consumer hardware product that customers
"demand" a store to exist. Look at the retail landscape, other than big box
electronics stores and office stores and Wal-Mart/Target, who is selling
consumer electronics physically? There's a lot of strip malls packed with
phone stores. People that want PC laptops/desktops mostly buy directly from
OEMs on their websites. People that want Xboxes or PlayStations are fine
grabbing it at Target, but more likely Amazon today.

Phones for various reasons (and a lot of them are phone carrier bureaucracy
related, I would imagine) "need" that extra bit of handholding, that service
relationship when buying one. Even Apple Stores, the vast majority of the
store space is devoted to phone sales and services and laptops/desktops an
after-thought. If you hear of lines and busy days of Apple Stores, it is
almost exclusively phones.

Microsoft created their Stores just too many months too late to save the
Windows Phone after the main US carriers decided 3 OSes was one too many
options to carry in their own stores. Once Microsoft Stores were no longer
selling Phones they always had less reason to exist, mostly existed already as
either Xbox Experiences or shadow versions of (for instance) Best Buy's
Surface section, without the rewards/brand loyalty of something like Best Buy.

~~~
tracker1
Haven't really been a console person for a long while... That said, I pretty
much favor big-box stores for a few different items namely game consoles,
televisions and monitors. It's likely just my own anecdotal bias here, but
I've had more of these die in the first month of use than any other
electronics, and having a place I can go to "now" to get it replaced is
usually a huge deal.

When the first X-box came out, the first one died within an hour of use... the
second in about two days, the third is still running (or was last time I
looked at it). 1/3 of TVs or Monitors I've mail ordered have been doa or
didn't make it a month.

In the end, I really do hope some of them survive as there's something to be
said for not mail order. Costco is usually really decent, and Best Buy is
sometimes really frustrating, but I like having some options even if I don't
like buying in person and would prefer mail order.

~~~
WorldMaker
Anecdotally I'm in a similar place. I believe that Amazon's electronics
"department" is little better than eBay these days and the amount of digging
just keeps increasing that you need to do to figure out who is actually
selling the device, what _their_ business model is, and if you can trust their
listing. (Are they a warehouse arbitrage just moving stuff from Wal-
Mart/Target/Costco/etc around, based on who has the highest current price? Are
they a nearly defunct old Mom & Pop shop whose only livelihood is now an
Amazon and/or eBay shingle? Are they a refurbisher shop that has the gall to
label "like new" items as "new" because Amazon's algorithms and mechanical
turks haven't caught them yet? Etc.)

That said, I've been charged with being weirdly "old school" that I'd often
rather pay extra at Best Buy than just order it for cheap on Amazon. (I've
needed to replace a PC monitor since March, but keep procrastinating it
because I don't want to buy it online.)

~~~
tracker1
I mostly only buy if Amazon is the seller... at least returns are pretty
consistent that way, though still subject to mingling. Same goes for using
newegg... was really sad when newegg added 3rd party sellers, it muddied the
site.

~~~
WorldMaker
Thing to watch out for is that Amazon often is the shipper but not the seller
and some of Amazon's greedier dark patterns make it tough sometimes to notice
that a product that looks sold by Amazon just means it is shipped by Amazon.
(It's one of the UX things were they have to be clear about it but are
fighting themselves with how clear to be. Both phrases "sold by" and "shipped
by" start with "s" end with "by" and you certainly have to imagine Amazon
counts on you skimming the middle parts in some of their UI layouts.) Outside
of "Amazon Basics" brand products, Amazon directly sells almost no
electronics, from my anecdata, but they certainly ship for a large percentage
of their 3rd party sellers (because of course they do, that's the easiest way
to make items Prime Eligible and thus further their Amazon SEO quotients).

Though Amazon can be credited that they are consistent with returns in
"shipped by" products as much as they are with "sold by" products. At least
there their attempts at confusing the marketplace means they hold up some
standards universally as well.

~~~
tracker1
I'm pretty careful about that... I will almost always only order if Amazon (or
the mfg) is the seller... and even then, I still favor Amazon (mostly for
return hassles).

------
josephpmay
I think one point people are missing:

Apple stores, even if they exist mainly to promote the brand, are MASSIVELY
profitable. In fact, they are one of the most profitable store chains in the
world. By contract, I believe that Microsoft was always running most of their
stores at a loss. Even for a massive company like Microsoft, continuously
running an unprofitable division is hard to maintain.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
This is purely anecdotal. Take it with a grain of salt.

We have a "high-end" Simon mall, in a town near where I live. It's quite
"upscale," with Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, etc.

It has an Apple Store near the South entrance, and a Microsoft Store, near the
center.

The Apple Store is _always_ packed. I haven't been there in a few months, so I
have no idea what's going on with it at the moment, but it has always been
jammed, when I have gone there; even at early or late hours. I have never
found a time when it is not crowded.

The Microsoft Store, on the other hand, usually has more staff than customers,
with the staff playing XBox in the sitting area outside the store.

~~~
gipp
Sure, but a large portion of the Apple store crowds has always been people
just hanging around and goofing off on the laptops. IIRC it's policy in those
places to always let people do that however long they want, even if there's
clearly no intent to buy anything. I've always wondered what portion of those
crowds are actually customers.

EDIT: Yes, everyone, I understand the marketing and lifetime-value reasons for
doing that. I'm just questioning the value of comparing crowd sizes as a
direct measure of relative instantaneous revenue/success.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
That happens in many stores. I call them "store groupies." Around here, vape
stores have them in droves. I remember them hanging around Science-Fiction
bookstores; often using the back rooms to have D&D games.

I think that every one of them becomes a customer, eventually. Many of them
become evangelists, which can sometimes be even more valuable.

~~~
k12sosse
and store employees call them "loiterers". A herd of human waste, with no
money or no intent to purchase anything.

~~~
hedora
If this is a problem, then don’t pay the employees based on commissions, and
train them to make such people feel welcome to ask questions, play with demo
machines, etc.

------
spunker540
When I was in a high school busking band, we went to the local mall to make
some money playing Christmas songs. We set up in front of the Apple store and
within 10 minutes we’re kicked out by security. As we were leaving, someone
from the fledgling Microsoft store told us they had a stage we could play on
in front of their store the following day (our first “paid” gig, they gave us
gift cards). The joke was on us though as it was an outdoor mall, and the
temperature didn’t break 20 degrees. The guitarists fingers could barely play,
but it was memorable nonetheless and presented a clear contrast in how the
Apple store vs Microsoft store treated young buskers!

~~~
donarb
Most malls don't allow buskers, solicitations or petition signing within their
properties.

------
sambroner
This is disappointing, although I'm not surprised.

One of the best things about the Microsoft stores is that they provided an
obvious way to get individual attention on software issues. My grandfather was
a frequent visitor of the Microsoft stores to resolve his _software_ issues
with his SurfaceBook and his generic Dell Laptop.

This type of one on one, in person attention was really useful to him and made
the Microsoft brand much more approachable. He loved going and he's gotten
really great with his computers!

Disappointing news for him and for me, although I can understand the business
justification.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> Disappointing news for him and for me, although I can understand the
> business justification.

Understanding the business justification is why I don’t understand why people
think Apple products are overpriced. Not a single other tech organization
wants to provide customer service other than Apple, even one with as much cash
as Microsoft. Why should I not reward Apple for putting their money where
their mouth is?

Obviously, anything less expensive than Apple products makes it unfeasible to
offer customer service in person and only merits waiting in a phone queue.

~~~
canada_dry
> Not a single other tech organization wants to provide customer service other
> than Apple

That's a stretch. I'd argue the level of support they're providing is the of
the lowest-hanging-fruit level (e.g. how do I transfer my contacts, setup the
device). Support forums are full of stories (and from my own experience) where
hardware related issues are dismissed and rejected at their stores.

~~~
lotsofpulp
That lowest hanging level fruit is the most valuable for my parents.

------
MisterBiggs
I've always had great experiences at the Microsoft store especially with
purchases and replacements. Right after the pandemic caused Microsoft to close
all their physical locations my Surface Pro 7 started getting green spots on
the screen that I've been waiting for the stores to reopen to get replaced.

Hearing the news today that the store wasn't going to be open I decided to try
the online support and it is a total mess. I tried to use text chat but after
an hour my position in the queue actually went up. So I decided to have them
call me which the wait took much longer than quoted. Then I spent over an hour
on the phone with a representative for what they even admitted was obviously a
manufacturer defect.

They didn't want to send me a new device before I shipped them my RMA unit so
they expected me to be without my laptop for a week while they processed the
claim. Then when they finally caved they couldn't tell me how large of a hold
they would put on my card while before my RMA reached them.

This whole process would have taken 5 minutes at the store, and I would have
walked out with a new laptop right then.

All in all I feel like all my Microsoft hardware products just massively
depreciated in value.

~~~
WWLink
I had a surface pro 1, and when it decided to randomly completely fail, I
called and was met with the same kinda customer service treatment you
explained. They offered to replace my week old tablet with a refurb if I
shipped mine to them and waited a couple weeks.

I found out there was a MS store right by where my internship was, so I
stopped by, explained my problem and showed it to them, and they handed me a
new replacement on the spot.

So yeah, same experience here lol. I wasn't going to mention it because I
figured they had gotten better by now. I'm sad to hear they haven't! That..
means I probably won't be buying any surface hardware again lol.

------
legitster
Microsoft stores are (were?) magical places full of bizarre and weird devices.
I actually had fun going in and seeing all sorts of gadgets and devices and
playing with demos. A candy store for futurists. In comparison Apple stores
are dystopian places full of rows of identical looking people looking at rows
of identical beige phones.

But I think it's pretty telling that I loved hanging out in them, but never
spent any money there.

~~~
alexchantavy
So funny that 10 years ago views about Microsoft and Apple were near the exact
opposite of what you described here.

~~~
nolok
They really weren't. Ten years ago Apple had even more conformity and less
choice than now, while Microsoft offering already full of fun stuff that would
not exist anymore 3 years later.

------
softwaredoug
Wow went to MS story on 5th avenue NYC in late Feb and was impressed. My son
loved the video gaming floor, and the hololens demo. Gave us free t-shirts!

I must say the experience is very impactful to your perception of the brand
and a lot of fun

~~~
AgloeDreams
I had a like experience.. but uh..when do they close the sale? To me they
seemed so try-hard that you couldn't actually think about 'buying something',
you know what I mean? Like an apple store (for a non-owner) is purely a low-
pressure sales experience. You walk in, you see products you might buy and you
can use and see them in a great environment.. but the MS store? They didn't
even have pure confidence in their own products (due to fear of upsetting
partners) that they sold 5+ competing brands that you could buy instead of a
Surface. from there it devolved into a best-buy-like 'whichever computer you
want!' instead of 'this MacBook Air is our right computer for you'. They
lacked focus.

~~~
city41
I liked that they offered other brands. But what I really wanted was a curated
collection of the best Windows laptops, not the rather random assortment they
actually had.

With an Apple laptop you know what you're getting. But with a Dell, Sony, HP,
Lenovo, etc, the quality is all over the map. I would have loved a single
location where I could test out all the best laptops available, and I always
wished the MS store had evolved into that.

------
nerdjon
While I am not surprised, I am disappointed by this.

Only because of the state of tech stores in Boston, if I needed something that
wasn't Apple (gaming mostly) they were the only other tech store I could
reasonably walk or take the train too. Microcenter isn't super close to a
train station.

~~~
sushshshsh
I always remembered walking along the Charles, really far west of the Mass Ave
bridge and asking myself "why is there a Microcenter here?"

~~~
MivLives
It is right next to Harvard and pretty close to MIT. There's a bunch of other
larger stores in the area.

Beats the one closest to Philly, which was a decent drive out of town.

~~~
sushshshsh
I guess I should be happy that there was a microcenter within walking distance
of those schools, but if you live on the other side of the Charles like me and
the other commenter, you will experience many a frosty 20 minute walk across
that cursed bridge to get from the Green line to the Red line :)

------
softwaredoug
How much is this MS deciding they’re really not a consumer brand - but rather
one focused on cloud and enterprises?

~~~
mytherin
Looks more to me like they are giving up on their Surface line-up
specifically, rather than all their consumer focused products. The Microsoft
stores & Surface line was Microsoft's attempt at copying Apple with expensive
devices with solid build quality and good support. It saw some success but
apparently not enough.

~~~
baybal2
> expensive devices with solid build quality and good support.

The part in the middle was definitely missing

~~~
0xffff2
Are you saying the build quality wasn't solid on the Surface lineup? That
doesn't match my experience at all.

------
skuthus
I guess I can say this now.

I worked for 5 years at the most revenue-generating microsoft store in the
world. We were near the official Microsoft campus. The short answer is that
things started to change internally around 2017, where stores changed their
hiring requirements and excised a lot of their top talent in favor of lower-
paid, less enthusiastic management and employees. This has been a steady
downhill process since - It is a shame that the stores will no longer be. I
loved my time working there, and loved the people and connections I made there
both personally and professionally. We genuinely went out of our way to make
customers happy, no matter the cost. It was inevitable that kind of goodwill
would be snuffed out by profit motive eventually.

~~~
quyleanh
It is disappointed. I love Microsoft and their services. I do expect Microsoft
will take their real effort and focus to customer, the end user, but looks
like it will never happen.

------
geerlingguy
A lot of people mention that the MS stores were a 'brand image' or 'marketing'
front, but if that's the case, I can see why they closed. The three or four I
visited were very near an Apple Store, and while the Apple Store across the
way was always bustling and had people standing around with their Apple
devices even outside the store front (I guess waiting for Genius
appointments)... the Microsoft stores were always sparsely populated with
maybe 5-10 brightly colored shirt employees and one or two customers.

~~~
chadcmulligan
> I guess waiting for Genius appointments

I'm convinced this is deliberate - the apple store is full of blue shirts and
people waiting for their appointments / devices to be fixed. It makes the
shops look like they're busy, most shops would not make people wait around
like that for things to be fixed, but apple gets away with it somehow. It's
all very clever - I call it apple theatre, and yes I participate myself. I'd
never wait that long to get my PC fixed, I'd drop it off and come back to pick
it up - total time 5 minutes, but somehow apple make it so people happily sit
round while the genii investigate things and engage in the mystical business
of fixing the phone/Mac, challenging the apple hierarchy to get that special
repair price for you, and I don't think I've paid full price for a repair for
a long time (ever?), so I indulge them.

~~~
jccalhoun
Is a busy store a positive thing for most potential customers? Even before
social distancing if I would see a crowded store I would not want to go in.

~~~
chadcmulligan
Perhaps, I've always noticed other shops empty but the apple shop is always
bustling, but not overly crowded (most of the time), just the impression of
things happening. I often compared it to the poor Bose shop (now defunct) that
was nearby, no one went in there because the salesman leapt upon you as soon
as you entered, and you couldn't just fiddle with things without being
bothered. Bose have great products but people don't linger there, and the same
for the Microsoft shops in the article, but people linger in apple stores -
it's by design. (I'm talking pre social distancing of course, but then, even
now, people are lining up outside apple stores like no other, and the blue
shirts are looking after every one, all with masks and sanitisers and checking
your temperature, all theatre - its a safe space, everything's OK in an apple
store!)

------
sys_64738
Apple stores had specific function and well-defined goals. Brand, hands on,
direct sale, all spring to mind. Microsoft stores seemed to have a motto of
"Copy Apple stores". I didn't get their reason for existing.

~~~
Octoth0rpe
Their reasons for existing were the same as the ones you listed for Apple
stores: Brand, hands on, direct sale. I'd also add that they serve as a place
where buyers believe that they can get support on product, thus increasing
their trust in the product. That's an incredibly valuable thing IMO.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Totally agree for Microsoft product owners.

One of the hard things for MS I think is that the Apple store was successful
because you couldn't get a Mac in the past anywhere else and it was a good
experience that really set the tone of the Mac.

Then the iPhone and iPod happened, that blew up the Store market for Apple.
Microsoft doesn't have an iPhone, didn't have a successful consumer market
beyond the Xbox and most can and will get a Microsoft product somewhere else.
Worse even, it is a hard place to read for the customer. What do they sell?
Obviously products running windows, but I don't think that really tied back to
Microsoft's own products, surface, Xbox, etc. When the stores first were
created the notable thing I realized about them was this: People, normal
people, don't actually care about Microsoft. They use their massive body of
work, they live the Microsoft life, but they don't actually see it as cool or
interesting. Few normal people are like 'Woah, look at the Surface Neo!'. They
have a major uptight brand problem, maybe the Mac v PC ads helped cause that,
perhaps an engineering-led culture rather than a product or human-focused
culture?

I think the lesson MS learned here is that you can and could copy everything
about an Apple store but that doesn't make you Apple and doesn't bring their
unique context in which the stores work extremely well.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> They have a major uptight brand problem, maybe the Mac v PC ads helped cause
> that, perhaps

Maybe because the standard advice given when purchasing a Microsoft device was
to spend hours reinstalling Windows to remove malware. I know technically it
was HP or Dell or Sony’s device, but since there was no non malware option,
obviously Microsoft chose to let those brands sully Microsoft’s brand for a
few dollars in short term profit.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Ironically that got so bad that they sold 'Microsoft signature editions'
without junk at the store.

------
twblalock
At one of the biggest malls in San Jose, there is a Microsoft Store and an
Apple Store right across the hallway from each other. On a normal day, anyone
walking by could see that the Apple Store was packed with people, and the
bored employees at the Microsoft store were standing around with nothing to
do. It was kind of sad.

It's not like Microsoft didn't have popular stuff to sell, especially the
Xbox.

------
Theodores
The London store is on Oxford Street and a lot of stores in that area are
flagships that don't have to make money directly. Not having to have stock or
cash registers just saves money, the main mission of having an impressive
presence need not be burdened with actual retail sales.

Some Oxford Street stores do make lots of money but there are many others
where ten minutes in the store is enough for you to see what is going on. The
whole range can be on show whereas in your regional town there is a fraction
of the range. But you can experience the brand.

Adjacent to Oxford Street is Tottenham Court Road. This was legendary in the
1990s for computer shops with fairs in nearby halls where you could buy
components for competitive prices, as if nobody was paying VAT. That scene
went a long time ago for more flagship stores to come along. These flagship
stores don't have to make sales to cover the rent. Microsoft are part of the
theme park.

------
kemiller2002
I'm bummed about that. The store was nice but no where near as full as
Apple's. They did a number of things for the community there. They held
training classes for kids etc. I'm sad to hear them leave.

------
otterpro
I've been to MS store only once last year to buy a laptop that was on sale. It
was a good and pleasant buying experience and the staff was very friendly.
However, I noticed that there weren't a lot of variety of hardware on sale. I
wish they had more computer stuff, like GPU, mechanical keyboards,
motherboards, etc.... Imagine if they were like mini Micro-center, I'd bet
they would've been a lot more popular than Apple store. The foot traffic alone
would've given them some good will for MS, if that was their intent.

~~~
askafriend
> Imagine if they were like mini Micro-center,

Not to be rude, but this idea is out of touch. Basically no one would want
this and the PC building market is impossibly tiny today. You'd get zero foot
traffic.

No one is building their own computers anymore and those that are, are
serviced incredibly well by Amazon/Newegg/etc.

~~~
noizejoy
Interestingly here in Canada, we have a smallish, but still growing retail
chain catering to the DIY pc builder market, called Memory Express.

They aren’t big box by any means, but I’ve been very happy to shop there.
Better selection than Best Buy, better curation than Amazon.

------
dade_
I think the stores were always about building the Surface brand and
relaunching the Windows & Office brand.

Demonstrating touch interfaces in the COVID world simply isn't going to work
anymore. The cloud has won, COVID killed prem.

Mission Accomplished! Was it profitable? Doesn't matter.

~~~
campl3r
it might be related to covid, but I fail to see how touch interfaces are
problematic for the store, people (and regulations) don't care anymore.

~~~
asveikau
I don't know where you are that people and regulations don't care, but I am
still going to stores that wipe payment touchscreens with sanitizer between
individual uses.

------
PaulWaldman
This is disappointing because the Microsoft stores seemed to be the only
retail B&Ms that carried premium Windows hardware. Aside from a few outliers,
stores like Best Buy tend to focus on volume Windows machines (Inspiron,
IdealPad, Pavillion). What's the alternative, buying three computers online
and returning the two you don't like?

------
limeblack
In my opinion this is linked to the shutdown of windows phone. If you haven’t
been following it it went from Windows Phone is dead[1]. To Bill Gates use
Android[2]. Subsequently Windows Phone was removed from the Microsoft Store.

[1]:
[https://windowsphone.stackexchange.com/questions/16686/as-20...](https://windowsphone.stackexchange.com/questions/16686/as-2018-is-
windows-phone-dead#16688) [2]:
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16365424/bill-gates-
andro...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16365424/bill-gates-android-
phone-switch)

------
partiallypro
I'm going to miss this. I was at a conference in San Francisco, dropped my
Surface. Shattering the screen. Luckily I could just walk to thew Microsoft
Store and they replaced it. I would have been so screwed if that store wasn't
there. I liked being able to go in and see the new Surface hardware before
launches. Best Buy would usually not get display units until after launch.
I've replaced an Xbox that had a bad HDMI unit...I'd had have to have waited a
week to get a new unit, but instead I just went to the Microsoft Store and got
it done immediately. I wish they would just scale them down instead of
shutting it all down.

------
johnvega
Bought this computer I'm using right now from a Microsoft retail store. Great
place to try out new computers. Disappointed.

~~~
AgloeDreams
> Great place to try out new computers.

Maybe that was the issue. At an Apple store if you said 'my kid needs a laptop
for college' they will walk you to ONE computer (MBA) and say 'it's the best
one' it's painless whereas MS was tied down by their partners to being non-
confident in their own line and basically being a Best Buy.

------
yodon
The service I've received in Microsoft stores when I've needed tech support
has been nothing short of phenomenal. Their "genius bar" equivalent is simply
the best I've ever used.

------
sleepybrett
I'm not a huge fan of microsoft, but I think this is a huge mistake. I've been
into the local MS store here in seattle (uvillage) on occasion to quickly grab
hardware or software from time to time. While it is clearly a sad apple follow
it always makes me feel a little better about MS as a company. It does
something to humanize them. So yeah, do they make a ton of money for them? Of
course not. Are they great for the brand, I'd argue yes.

------
ChicagoDave
This is disappointing. The pandemic is certainly a change in my own behavior,
but I regularly visited two Microsoft stores in the Chicago area and have made
large purchases in each. Especially when new hardware is released, it’s great
to see it within the construct of a corporate setting.

Of course the Best Buy model of having manufacturer space like a mini mall
helps balance this loss, it’s not the same level of interaction.

Very disappointing.

------
gentleman11
Microsoft’s stores were very nice except that they had double the staff they
needed and were using headsets to coordinate their sales efforts and pressure
me into buying things... several of their main brands also had histories of
installing spyware on their consumer devices which made me really
uncomfortable and kept me from buying a couple of times (Lenovo, Dell, razer,
another I forget)

~~~
WorldMaker
Microsoft Stores actually had a policy that the PCs they sold were only
allowed to have clean OS images ("Signature Edition" was the branding term),
which means that it was the safest place to buy Lenovo/Dell/etc. You'd pay on
average about $50 more than if you bought directly from Lenovo or Dell, but
you'd have peace of mind that you wouldn't need to reinstall Windows to make
sure that you had removed all the spyware/adware.

ETA: Which is maybe the biggest loss with the Microsoft Stores going away. You
could point a relative at a Microsoft Store and not worry about any PC they
picked, but any other store you'd need to expect to do a reinstall for them or
worry about which specific brand name they picked.

------
ibero
very interesting on the verge of their new console hardware launch.

the stores had a such a strong "games" presence that I assumed it would be
critical showpiece of them-- especially if they have an All Digital hardware
edition which meant (albeit dying) retailers like Gamestop would probably not
carry the console.

it's a shame, regardless. i always had such a good customer experience there.

------
Fiveplus
I scoured through two financial annual reports of MS for 2018 and 2019 but
found no emphasis on the growth/profit or loss margins of their retail
outlets. Though, I've heard a great deal about them and it seems like they
were useful.

Fun fact: MS always aimed to open their outlets in serious close proximity to
Apple stores.

------
sbisson
Of course the other question is: will there be any malls left open for stores
like these? I suspect this a calculation many retail stores are toying with at
the moment; we're in the middle of a fundamental shift in retail to online and
local stores.

We've already seen one mall owner in the UK go into administration.

------
tolger
This makes me sad. I thought the Microsoft Store at the Domain in Austin was
very cool and I visited from time to time. There was also an Apple store in
the same location so I could visit both! And there was a Borders Bookstore,
which I loved browsing in, and is also closed now :-(

------
thecrumb
They should put BSOD in the windows when they close.

------
thordenmark
Sad to hear, but unsurprising. The MS store near us looked nice yet was always
a ghost town. They're just not as sexy as an Apple store, though they've done
a great job with the latest versions of Windows and the XBox is fairly
popular.

~~~
gketuma
So you mean Steve Jobs was right when he said: "They just have no taste."

[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2471632/steve-jobs-
on-...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2471632/steve-jobs-on-microsoft
---they-just-have-no-taste--.html)

------
gojomo
If past is prelude, they'll try again, within about a decade.

They first tried a retail store ~1999-2001, before even Apple, with at least
one outlet being in San Francisco's downtown 'Metreon':

[https://www.technologizer.com/2009/10/20/1999-microsoft-
stor...](https://www.technologizer.com/2009/10/20/1999-microsoft-store-
vs-2009-microsoft-store/)

(By my recollection, it was somewhere within the 2nd-floor footprint of the
Target that's there now... not far from the bowling alley/arcade.)

------
wronglebowski
Wonder what will happen to the products at these locations. As someone who
lives very close to one (King of Prussia), I'd love to see a chance to pick up
some display models on the cheap.

------
jaybeeayyy
Wow...TIL Microsoft had retail stores.

~~~
neilsimp1
Same. Wondering if it is a regional thing? Never in my life have I heard of or
seen a Microsoft store.

~~~
blntechie
They were almost in every major US city or their suburbs I think. In suburbs,
they were predominantly in malls.

~~~
WorldMaker
Pretty much every US city with an Apple Store had at least the mall kiosk
version of the Microsoft Store, almost always within earshot or horizon
distance from the Apple Store "coincidentally".

~~~
jodrellblank
Why “coincidentally” in scare quotes?

If one company is going to open an electronics store, they will put it where
it is accessible to the most possible customers. If another company wants to
open one they can either put it in the same place for the same reason - and
now there are customers who go to that region to buy that kind of goods making
it more desirable - or they can put it somewhere else where it is accessible
to fewer customers, and that’s a silly decision.

~~~
WorldMaker
Not so much "scare quotes" as "wink, wink" quotes, somewhere between a joke
and reality.

Some of it was documented as intentional. The one specific one I know was that
Microsoft was said very explicitly in location scouting in New York that their
NYC store needed to be close the Apple Store.

Anecdotally, my city has two malls on the same side of the same street with an
interstate in between them (and today owned by the same management company
even). Apple for various reasons chose the smaller of the two with less
overall foot traffic. Microsoft could have gone to the mall with more foot
traffic, but didn't. While anecdotes are not proof, it is amusing sign.

------
alexashka
It'll be interesting to see what happens when most Best Buys follow suit and
we have no stores left to come in and try non-Apple products.

In some sense, this is a big window of opportunity for Dell to get smart and
fix their website from looking like a warehouse dump for nerds who want the
best deal and give a shit about specs, to actual customers who just to see an
intuitive product line-up and extra details if and when they want that.

------
sneak
Turns out that building radio sets out of coconut shells won’t actually make
the planes come back.

Were these ever super profitable, or did they just count under brand
marketing?

~~~
dgellow
Those kind of stores are mostly a marketing tool. That works quite well if
done correctly.

------
m3kw9
Went in to a MS store just once ever. Before I go in, I always ask myself what
have I not seen in windows already? Touch screen with a windows, not very hard
to predict how it is same as using a pointer. That VR demo? I’m not gonna wait
and look stupid. Maybe they failed to sell intrigue compared to Apple stores.
Their products has mystique to it when they first come out and you always want
to try it.

~~~
city41
Apple hasn't really released anything new in quite some time. Pretty much just
iterative releases and upgrades. yet Apple stores are often so crowded you
can't even walk in them. I think it's more than just new product launches.

------
topkai22
Not surprising to me, but its really too bad. The consumer side was always
hopeless, but I thought the stores provided a great hook into the small
business, education, and non-profit sectors- orgs too small to have anything
resembling a decent IT department who needed help. I wonder what the effort
would look like if those customers had been the focus instead of individual
consumers.

------
coliveira
MS stores were created trying to emulate the success of Apple stores. However,
from the get go this was a strange decision, since MS has no exclusivity on
HW. Even Xbox can be purchased on other physical and online stores, sometimes
at a cheaper price. They also don't provide support to a lot of this hardware,
opposed to Apple that also uses stores as as service centers.

~~~
smabie
You can buy Apple products from other places too, though.

------
yarrel
This makes sense. Microsoft are not a retail company. Copying Apple's stores
made no sense either economically or aesthetically.

------
smoyer
Apparently if you're not dramatically over-charging for your consumer
technology products, you can't afford brick-and-mortar locations. Those who do
pay for the premium platform should realize that not (nearly) all of the
additional cost goes into product quality.

Note that this discounts design superiority/inferiority.

~~~
scarface74
By definition, if people are buying at the price that Apple sets at the
margins Apple wants and there are alternatives, the product is not
“overpriced”. That’s kind of Economics 101

~~~
smoyer
True ... I should have used the word "premium" instead to represent the
economic difference in the unit price and associated margins.

------
racl101
Apple stores, on the other hands, are like popular night clubs these days.

I was at the mall the other day and saw a long line up of people looking to
get in and a girl with an iPad looking through her list to see if she could
admit people immediately (the people who made appointments), or make them wait
(those who didn't).

------
JoeMayoBot
Sad - their service was exceptional. Once had a problem with my Surface Book
and they replaced it right there.

------
nanna
Whenever I go past the Oxford Circus store I think to myself, if only we had
stores like this for Linux.

~~~
joveian
There are, at least here in Portland, Or (US). FreeGeek is a recycler and
resells used equipment, usually with Ubuntu. They have made their store more
like the Apple store over the years and reduced the number of random parts
they sell (although they still have quite a few things). For Linux, any
computer made in the past seven years or so that is well supported works great
for a lot of people. They have a tech support window that will spend hours
with people having trouble and classes in a different part of the building.
The hardware itself is fairly expensive considering its age but for anyone who
is likely to use the tech support it is likely one of the best deals
available.

[https://www.freegeek.org/](https://www.freegeek.org/)

------
DJBunnies
These stores always seemed like a desperate attempt to copy apple. Which would
be fine if they had product lines that were interesting. But they don't.

~~~
dgellow
The surface product lines generates a lot of interest.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Apple sells 100s of phones and iPads for each surface sold. One can't just
take their store model without their context and think it will be as
successful. Plus you can get a surface at any store, no need to go to a
Microsoft store that sells a random assortment of a computers (not just their
own) where a new user might not realize a Surface is a Microsoft product.

~~~
dgellow
Sure but you don't have to be Apple successful for the physical store project
to be considered successful.

------
quicklime
> Reimagined as experience centers

Ugh, I wish we lived in a world where they could just say “converted to
showrooms”.

------
Redoubts
_The company tells The Verge that no layoffs will result from today’s
decision. “Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this diverse
talent pool is stronger than ever,”_

Impressive, but pretty curious how they plan to successfully pull this off.

------
awa
I am bummed about this. The Microsoft store near me was a great place to check
out the latest windows hardware and what xbox is upto nowadays. I liked that I
could just hang out at the store and browse around with no sales pressure.

------
goatherders
I always enjoyed the store, there is one 100 yards from where I sit right now.
But a store where the point is for people to touch as many things as possible
is probably not a viable thing anymore.

------
gjsman-1000
It is a shame, but not unexpected. I visited the one in the Mall of America,
which was ironically directly across the Apple Store. The Apple Store had much
more foot traffic every single time.

~~~
donatj
I kind of liked that they were right across from each other. Had a nice sense
of competition. The Apple store moved to the other side of the mall about a
year ago.

------
hosker4u
Maybe because im based in the North of the UK, I've never been or should I say
seen a Microsoft Retail Store. Walked past plenty of Apple Stores.

------
gjsman-1000
Correction for the headline: They are closing all stores, not nearly all. The
4 remaining locations will be "reimagined" and will not handle any retail
sales.

------
vondur
I wonder if they did tech support like the Apple store does. In my opinion
that’s why the Apple stores are so popular.

------
blntechie
Real shame. Their stores were always interesting with a mix of people checking
out anything from Surface Books to kids checking out Xbox consoles and playing
games etc.

Unlike Apple stores, which I have always felt like a sterile hospital wing, it
was a very diverse mix of people in Microsoft stores.

------
matthewfelgate
Microsoft had retail stores?

------
chasd00
they could probably turn half the store into xbox arcades and break even.
However, covid19 throws that and probably any other investment heavy retail
idea right out the window.

------
LeicaLatte
Surprised they took this decision on a console launch year.

------
yahyaheee
Guess the “we’re cool like apple” play didn’t work out

------
martinesko36
How is this the news to come from a company with $1.5T mkt cap? How is
Microsoft possibly valued so highly? They can't even ship a redesign on
Windows.

