56% Of VR Devs Say VR ‘Declining Or Stagnating’

If you look around, virtual reality growth projections are all over the map. Most of the folks with money invested in the market see nothing but blue sky ahead. But several core problems remain: virtual reality headsets still make a lot of people sick (anywhere from 40-70% of users), and a huge swath of people simply don’t like having a giant chunk of sweaty plastic strapped to their face.

The other problem has largely been the lack of any true, unmissable “killer app.” I’m not a VR doomer; I currently own three headsets (PS5 VR2, The Oculus Quest 3S, and the Vive Index). I’ve been tinkering with the technology since I first strapped on a headset demo at E3 in 2000.

Using all three makes me sick after more than 20 minutes, no matter what kind of tricks I try. And while I’ve enjoyed some scattered game experiences on all three, the market still seems fairly awash in lower quality derivative stuff that doesn’t have a whole lot of staying power once the novelty wears off. They’re also all just generally uncomfortable to various degrees, making them ill-suited for extended use.

Developers seem to agree with the state of the sector; a recent survey of game developers found that 56 percent of them find the VR market is “currently declining or stagnating.” In part because the cost to develop these products isn’t being recouped on the other end due to limited mass market appeal for all the reasons outlined above.

The landmark moment for the industry recently was the release of the costly Apple Vision Pro, and while Apple users get defensive about the point and will immediately proclaim “it’s just a prototype!”, it landed with a giant thud. Developers tend to agree, stating Apple’s impact on the market was minimal thus far.

Then of course there’s Meta and Mark “I’m no longer political while still lobbying government for favors and kissing up to Republicans” Zuckerberg, who somehow thought he could magically translate his giant boomer-heavy sneaker advertising empire into a near-magical domination of the entirety of virtual spaces.

While the Meta headsets are decent products, the same problem remains: VR simply doesn’t have mass market appeal. You can’t under-estimate how little most of the public likes having cumbersome, dorky plastic strapped to their face.

A lot of the problem translates into the fact that the technology (battery life and size, computing scale and power) simply isn’t where it needs to be for AR/VR to live up to the hype and break through to the mainstream. For mass adoption the technology needs to be seamless, minimalistic, and utterly unobtrusive, not whatever this is supposed to be:

From there you need to develop a groundbreaking software ecosystem and a compilation of near-magical, non-vomit inducing killer apps that justify the price tag. Preferably with minimal walled gardens and annoying limits. Eventually somebody will create the near-perfect device and ecosystem, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, despite all of his money and effort and mid-life crisis fashion rebranding efforts, it probably won’t be Mark Zuckerberg.

Like LLMs (“AI”) there’s just a ton of potential in virtual and augmented reality that goes well beyond pretending to be Batman. Unfortunately, VC hucksters once again let the apple cart get ahead of the horse, flooding the market and press with mindless hype and unrealistic expectations. It will probably take another 5-10 years for reality and technology to finally catch up.