As promised, Microsoft opened registrations today for those wishing to attend its Build 2016 developer conference in March - but it didn"t take long for the event to sell out.
Those attempting to purchase one of the $2,195 tickets for the event clogged the company"s registration site, and within moments, people trying to sign up were quickly informed that they"d been added to a waiting list.
Microsoft"s Steven Guggenheimer - Chief Evangelist of Developer Experience - noted how quickly the event had sold out this year, and said that the company is "working on more capacity for next year" in response to the considerable demand for tickets to the event.
Amazingly, while it took 20 minutes for tickets to Build 2015 to sell out, Guggs - as he"s affectionately known within the Microsoft community - said that tickets for this year"s event sold out in just one minute.
Notably, however, those who attend this year will not receive any of the free hardware that attendees in previous years received, as Microsoft MVP Morten Nielsen was among the first to notice on the registration site:
The site pointed that "in some previous years Microsoft has provided a hardware giveaway to support platform development priorities for Build attendees. This year, we will forgo hardware in favor of delivering a deeper technical experience for developers." [emphasis ours]
It"s not entirely clear why Microsoft isn"t able to provide both the hardware giveaway and a "deeper technical experience" - particularly given that the price to attend is $100 higher than last year - but it clearly hasn"t affected demand for tickets.
For those who won"t be able to attend Build 2016, Microsoft will be streaming its main keynotes, along with "select sessions" from the conference, which begins on March 30.