Anyone can hypothesize potential failure spirals—the high price means adoption isn’t high enough to make money on VR games, developers stop making VR games, adoption dries up, VR goes away forever—but that’s getting ahead of the situation. I’m really not worried. I fell in love with the Rift DK1, which absolutely sucks compared to later prototypes. I think this technology is cool as hell, and whether it stays niche or becomes as big as personal computing itself doesn’t really matter to me: I’m confident it’ll be here for me when I save up the money to buy in. And if it’s not the Rift that I’m into, and it’s the HTC Vive (which I currently am more interested in), that’s fine too. Or maybe it’s something else. I don’t care what big company makes lots of money. I want good technology that I can afford, and I think that’ll happen.
To be fair, we’re definitely used to VR failing—years ago, before Oculus existed, I wrote a big article for another publication detailing all the failures that had me convinced we’d never have proper VR—but I’ve now toyed around with prototypes that completely blow away any consumer headset that’s ever existed. I watched EVE fans experience the very first Valkyrie prototype at Fanfest—on those crappy DK1s—and be dumbfounded. I’ve heard John Carmack talk about having memories of being inside Minecraft. I’ve spoken to Justin Roiland about how he’s more excited to make VR games than Rick & Morty. Too many people are too excited about the potential for VR for it to go away because the first headset has a $600 tag on it.
In a few years we’ll look back and laugh at how expensive it was—the same way anyone today would balk at the price of a CRT monitor in 1993—but we’re not going to be burying it when we do. I think we’ll have some really cool hardware in our hands. I’m tired of waiting, but I’ve already waited my whole life, so what’s another year or so.