Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

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.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>This sucks.

I think one point people are missing:<p>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.

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!

This is disappointing, although I&#x27;m not surprised.<p>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 <i>software</i> issues with his SurfaceBook and his generic Dell Laptop.<p>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&#x27;s gotten really great with his computers!<p>Disappointing news for him and for me, although I can understand the business justification.

I&#x27;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&#x27;ve been waiting for the stores to reopen to get replaced.<p>Hearing the news today that the store wasn&#x27;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.<p>They didn&#x27;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&#x27;t tell me how large of a hold they would put on my card while before my RMA reached them.<p>This whole process would have taken 5 minutes at the store, and I would have walked out with a new laptop right then.<p>All in all I feel like all my Microsoft hardware products just massively depreciated in value.

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.<p>But I think it&#x27;s pretty telling that I loved hanging out in them, but never spent any money there.

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

While I am not surprised, I am disappointed by this.<p>Only because of the state of tech stores in Boston, if I needed something that wasn&#x27;t Apple (gaming mostly) they were the only other tech store I could reasonably walk or take the train too. Microcenter isn&#x27;t super close to a train station.

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

I guess I can say this now.<p>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.

A lot of people mention that the MS stores were a &#x27;brand image&#x27; or &#x27;marketing&#x27; front, but if that&#x27;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.

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 &quot;Copy Apple stores&quot;. I didn&#x27;t get their reason for existing.

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.<p>It&#x27;s not like Microsoft didn&#x27;t have popular stuff to sell, especially the Xbox.

The London store is on Oxford Street and a lot of stores in that area are flagships that don&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;t have to make sales to cover the rent. Microsoft are part of the theme park.

I&#x27;m bummed about that. The store was nice but no where near as full as Apple&#x27;s. They did a number of things for the community there. They held training classes for kids etc. I&#x27;m sad to hear them leave.

I&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;d bet they would&#x27;ve been a lot more popular than Apple store. The foot traffic alone would&#x27;ve given them some good will for MS, if that was their intent.

I think the stores were always about building the Surface brand and relaunching the Windows &amp; Office brand.<p>Demonstrating touch interfaces in the COVID world simply isn&#x27;t going to work anymore. The cloud has won, COVID killed prem.<p>Mission Accomplished! Was it profitable? Doesn&#x27;t matter.

This is disappointing because the Microsoft stores seemed to be the only retail B&amp;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&#x27;s the alternative, buying three computers online and returning the two you don&#x27;t like?

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.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;windowsphone.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;16686&#x2F;as-2018-is-windows-phone-dead#16688" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;windowsphone.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;16686&#x2F;as-20...</a> [2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;9&#x2F;26&#x2F;16365424&#x2F;bill-gates-android-phone-switch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;9&#x2F;26&#x2F;16365424&#x2F;bill-gates-andro...</a>

I&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;ve replaced an Xbox that had a bad HDMI unit...I&#x27;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.

Bought this computer I&#x27;m using right now from a Microsoft retail store. Great place to try out new computers. Disappointed.

The service I&#x27;ve received in Microsoft stores when I&#x27;ve needed tech support has been nothing short of phenomenal. Their &quot;genius bar&quot; equivalent is simply the best I&#x27;ve ever used.

I&#x27;m not a huge fan of microsoft, but I think this is a huge mistake. I&#x27;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&#x27;d argue yes.

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.<p>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.<p>Very disappointing.

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)

very interesting on the verge of their new console hardware launch.<p>the stores had a such a strong &quot;games&quot; 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.<p>it&#x27;s a shame, regardless. i always had such a good customer experience there.

I scoured through two financial annual reports of MS for 2018 and 2019 but found no emphasis on the growth&#x2F;profit or loss margins of their retail outlets. Though, I&#x27;ve heard a great deal about them and it seems like they were useful.<p>Fun fact: MS always aimed to open their outlets in serious close proximity to Apple stores.

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&#x27;re in the middle of a fundamental shift in retail to online and local stores.<p>We&#x27;ve already seen one mall owner in the UK go into administration.

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 :-(

They should put BSOD in the windows when they close.

Sad to hear, but unsurprising. The MS store near us looked nice yet was always a ghost town. They&#x27;re just not as sexy as an Apple store, though they&#x27;ve done a great job with the latest versions of Windows and the XBox is fairly popular.

If past is prelude, they&#x27;ll try again, within about a decade.<p>They first tried a retail store ~1999-2001, before even Apple, with at least one outlet being in San Francisco&#x27;s downtown &#x27;Metreon&#x27;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologizer.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;20&#x2F;1999-microsoft-store-vs-2009-microsoft-store&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologizer.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;20&#x2F;1999-microsoft-stor...</a><p>(By my recollection, it was somewhere within the 2nd-floor footprint of the Target that&#x27;s there now... not far from the bowling alley&#x2F;arcade.)

Wonder what will happen to the products at these locations. As someone who lives very close to one (King of Prussia), I&#x27;d love to see a chance to pick up some display models on the cheap.

Wow...TIL Microsoft had retail stores.

It&#x27;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.<p>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.

Turns out that building radio sets out of coconut shells won’t actually make the planes come back.<p>Were these ever super profitable, or did they just count under brand marketing?

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.

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.

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&#x27;t provide support to a lot of this hardware, opposed to Apple that also uses stores as as service centers.

This makes sense. Microsoft are not a retail company. Copying Apple&#x27;s stores made no sense either economically or aesthetically.

Apparently if you&#x27;re not dramatically over-charging for your consumer technology products, you can&#x27;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.<p>Note that this discounts design superiority&#x2F;inferiority.

Apple stores, on the other hands, are like popular night clubs these days.<p>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&#x27;t).

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

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

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&#x27;t.

&gt; Reimagined as experience centers<p>Ugh, I wish we lived in a world where they could just say “converted to showrooms”.

<i>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,” </i><p>Impressive, but pretty curious how they plan to successfully pull this off.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe because im based in the North of the UK, I&#x27;ve never been or should I say seen a Microsoft Retail Store. Walked past plenty of Apple Stores.

Correction for the headline: They are closing all stores, not nearly all. The 4 remaining locations will be &quot;reimagined&quot; and will not handle any retail sales.

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

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

Microsoft had retail stores?

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.

Surprised they took this decision on a console launch year.

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

How is this the news to come from a company with $1.5T mkt cap? How is Microsoft possibly valued so highly? They can&#x27;t even ship a redesign on Windows.