Project Oris is a smart speaker/Xbox/projector and we’re not convinced

At this stage, nothing can surprise us anymore. Tech conglomerates around the world are pushing their creative capacity to launch weird and wonderful new products. But that doesn’t mean that it’ll be successful. Like this concept Xbox project that doubles as a smart speaker and a… projector?

“Designed to be at the very centre of your life at home, the Project Oris lets you play games, listen to music, and even watch media. You could hook it to a screen, or you could just point it at a blank wall and let its in-built projector broadcast an 8K HDR display. For music and gaming, the display is complemented by the console’s in-built 5 audio drivers that deliver rich bass as well as crisp highs in all directions,” Yankodesign details the features of their project. As far as we can tell, this is a completely independent concept, meaning Microsoft didn’t have a hand in its conceptualisation. 

But we’re not convinced. 

Historically, any AI voice assistants that aren’t Siri, Google or Alexa have failed. Why? It comes down to the fact that these three have the capacity for major machine learning computers and a database of voice recognition software. Google’s voice recognition is off the rail — something you can only achieve from listening to billions of users over a span of several years. Remember Bixby? 

Samsung has halted its whole smart speaker project, or so it seems. Since it debuted the Galaxy Smart Home Speaker in 2018, we haven’t seen a realised product in the market yet. How does a major superpower like Samsung struggle to launch a smart speaker lineup? It just doesn’t have the scope and power that Google, Apple and Amazon boast in terms of server capacity, voice recognition capability and machine learning abilities. 

In theory, Microsoft, the guys behind Xbox, will have the capability in terms of servers and machine learning — no argument there. But it’s way behind the smart assistant game, which will make it a harder sell. We also reckon the addition of a projector is absolute overkill. Do you know how much a decent projector costs? It will push up the price to unaffordable rates. 

We can see an Xbox console/smart assistant working as a smart home addition, but the projector/hi-fi combo is definitely overkill. They’ll have to sacrifice gaming capacity to house major projector components and big drivers for the speakers. If all of the hardware is top-shelf, this machine will turn out gigantic. And sacrificing on one of them would mean they could just as well remove the capability completely.

A crappy projector is better left off anyway. So, we could kind of see Project Oris working if the Assistant works well, and maybe the speaker. But right now it feels like a mashup of all the things that will work better separately.

Sauce: Yankodesigns