By launching retail outside of the North American market, there is a chance Australians may get to experience the more cutting edge of the company's hardware development cycle.
While we're going to have to wait and see on that particular front, we do know that Inside the store things will be immediately familiar to anyone who has visited a current Microsoft retail store.
"We are always changing the assortment of the products in stores to meet the demand of our customers in the specific stores and always make sure we're refreshing and giving people the right opportunity to get the latest devices," says Adashek.
"But we have a phone space, we have an Xbox space – this store will have a dedicated space for Xbox where people can come in and play. In the US we have places for people to come in and play on 96-inch televisions in our stores, with screens embedded in our video wall."
And at the centre of the store we'll see other flagship products, depending on what's popular, from both Microsoft and OEM partners.
Adashek expects that about 50 retail staff will be hired for the new store and put through the company's intensive retail training program over the next few months.
All your questions answered
Of course, you can't have a consumer technology retail store without some form of customer service platform. The Answer Desk is Microsoft's response to the Apple Genius Bar, and it's probably going to get very busy at the Sydney Store.
"The Answer Desk is really set up to help people answer questions and solve their problems," Adashek tells us. "And the interesting thing that fundamentally makes us different on that front is that we don't care where you got your device, we don't care who made your device, we don't care when you got it."
In other words, the Answer Desk is not exclusively for the Xbox or the Surface or Lumia phones – it's for anything that runs Windows – or even plugs in to a Windows machine. Adashek elaborates:
"If you have a problem, if you have a question about something you're doing related to the Windows ecosystem, we will help you. And in many, many, many cases, it will be for free," he says.
- We're betting there's going to be a big section dedicated to the Surface 3 when the store opens
