From Jon Evans TechCrunch:
“Despite many pronouncements that 2016 was the year of VR, a more apt word for virtual reality might be absence,” The Economist observed
caustically last summer, noting that during that year forecasts of
combined sales of VR hardware and software dropped from $5.1bn to $3.6bn
to the harsh reality of $1.8bn. But hey, one rough holiday season does
not an industry make, right? Surely in 2017 things began to —
— oh. "Shock Stat: In 2017, VR Headset Shipments For Most Top Brands Went DOWN Compared To 2016." So much for the many predictions that VR headset shipments would grow exponentially for years. Crow appears to be the appetizer for nearly every industry dinner these days. But that was before the Oculus Go, right? Except … the Go seems to have sold at most a quarter of a million units
in its first few weeks, far behind the comparably priced Nintendo
Switch released months earlier, and as I write this languishes well
outside the top 20 of Amazon’s “Video Games > Accessories”
bestsellers.
[...]
I dropped by the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara this week, and my
main takeaway was that the industry has essentially abandoned the
consumer AR/VR space, at least for now. Everyone’s aiming at AR/VR for
work now. But how many jobs are there, really, where complex information
needs to be accessed in a hands-free way? How many problems can be
solved by VR conferencing but not videoconferencing? Sure, they exist,
and the tech can be spectacularly great for them; but, again, for now at
least, we’re talking Next Little Niche.
[...]
It’s the very early days of a new technology. It’s expensive. It’s
still hardware-intensive. We’re still figuring out its best uses, and
how it interacts with human physical location, and a whole new grammar
of storytelling. But the Oculus Kickstarter launched almost six years
ago, and I’ve seen a whole lot of VR/AR/mixed-reality demos since then,
and every time, I walk away thinking: “This technology has so much potential.”
But in order to be the Next Big Thing at some point you have to actually start realizing your potential [...] the disheartening truth is that, despite the low-price new standalone hardware, despite all the effort that’s gone into software and design and storytelling, I still don’t feel like we’re meaningfully closer to that than we were two years ago.
Have I mentioned lately that articles like this are becoming increasingly common? Sure, people who are materially or emotionally invested in VR are still trying to sound bullish on its prospects, but those forecasts are looking increasingly ridiculous in the face of clear evidence that VR simply isn't happening, their foundations made of nothing but hype and hot air.