VR Gaming is Totally Doomed

If the best games can’t sell, what’s the point?

Power Wash Simulator VR screenshot captured by the author on Quest 3 hardware.

The current VR headset market has always felt more like a fad that got stretched out too long rather than a mainstream success. When you’re inside the tech bubble, it’s easy to feel like it’s the coolest thing ever made. But from the outside, the market is always just a few steps away from total collapse.

Having lived with some of the hardware for a year now, I’m not sure that anything can ever change that.

Apple has apparently stopped making Vision Pro units after wildly missing sales targets. Sony came out of the gate strong with the PSVR 2, only to quickly run in the other direction when software support lagged and users didn’t show up. Meta has continued to pour comical amounts of money into new hardware and new game titles, even though it has been tremendously detrimental to their bottom line in most years.

As we’ll see in a moment, it’s not possible to succeed on the platform even if you make one of the most transcendentally fun games that already hit big on other machines. I’m not sure how all this can continue.

My own skepticism over all the current ongoing VR mess meant I got into this space rather late...at least compared to its one and only moment of almost-success. Back in 2020 and 2021, the Meta Quest 2…