I wrote an article about how Microsoft thinks about mixed reality in our developer documentation: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/.... The term comes from a paper published in 1994 by Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino. Our usage of the term mixed reality derives from the concepts they introduce their, in particular the virtuality continuum.
It is fair to say that the headsets being introduced this holiday target VR experiences. That said, we are building a platform that covers the entire spectrum of devices (from HoloLens to all the new headsets coming this holiday). The platform is consistent between all of the devices. In fact, we made very few additions to the API set from the original APIs introduced with HoloLens to support these new devices. Since the platform supports the broad spectrum of devices, and it's a single API set for all of them, it only makes sense to refer to this category as mixed reality.
It is fair to say that the headsets being introduced this holiday target VR experiences. That said, we are building a platform that covers the entire spectrum of devices (from HoloLens to all the new headsets coming this holiday). The platform is consistent between all of the devices. In fact, we made very few additions to the API set from the original APIs introduced with HoloLens to support these new devices. Since the platform supports the broad spectrum of devices, and it's a single API set for all of them, it only makes sense to refer to this category as mixed reality.