Is Virtual Reality a Consumer Platform? Not Yet.

You lost me with the first sentence, which declares we are entering: “Year 2 of the emergence of Virtual Reality as a consumer platform”. 

VR is far from a consumer platform. It is still the realm of hobbyists, gamers, and curiosity seekers. Part of your reverie? So many of us have a stake in the success of this technology that we see it as we want it to be, not as it is.

We are on an accelerated path, to be sure, but we’re still years ago from truly immersive consumer VR in the home. The next several years we’ll see consumers get more familiar with VR in public spaces, where it is an assisted and highly curated experience, but in VR’s current state, this is hardly going to cause a gold rush.

Two things to keep in mind: (1) right now VR is about low end mobile systems like GearVR, which is meh and (2) there are several important AR technology introductions (Magic Leap, ODG, Hololens, etc.) that have yet to reach consumers, but have the potential to completely disrupt the development path of VR, and re-order the deck.

It’s an exciting time for these new technologies which have transformative potential, but we are far from mass consumer adoption. We’re going to look at the primitive costly systems you call a consumer platform and laugh that anyone called them so. Feels more like year zero to me.