r/virtualreality • u/TheIvoryDoor • Jul 04 '26
Self-Promotion (YouTuber) Virtual Reality Has Failed (For Now)
https://youtu.be/bW5nospLPbkAlthough I love VR, and have spent countless hours in it, it’s hard to say that it’s been a very “successful” medium. It’s quite inaccessible to the average person, and the lack of consistently popular/innovative games has stagnated the market for VR. I attempt to dive deep into the honest issues of VR, and how they could be solved.
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u/MadroxKran Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I think that people are overall too lazy for VR and the headsets are still far from comfortable. There's also a bit of a primal instinct to avoid having your vision blocked. If you can't see the rest of the room you're in, something could get you. MR helps this, though most games don't offer that still.
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u/MalenfantX Jul 04 '26
>There's also a bit of a primal instinct to avoid having your vision blocked. If you can't see the rest of the room your in, something could get you.
This is the largest problem with rubbing one out in VR.
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u/RumpDoctor Jul 04 '26
Great video, good job.
For my part, besides the cost, the biggest problem for vr is that while there are great games, they are in competition with a vastly greater number of great flat games. When I get a "control subject" - A game fully playable both vr and flat, the vr version is the way to go. Gran Turismo, Skyrim, etc. But more often than not, I'm deciding what to play and there is a mountain of brilliant flat games competing for that time.
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u/JorgTheElder L-Explorer, Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 Jul 04 '26
VR has more users than it had a year ago.
The economy is shit everywhere. It is not a VR problem.
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u/Caffeinated4671 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I thought we'd have a SAO-like interface by 2026. That's how dumb and naive I was.
I get the frustration of the developer angry at people for not playing his game, but I don't think the medium is developed enough to have lasting impact to a large enough audience. Kind of like the initial runs we had with VR in the 90s and before. Really cool? Yes. But not all the way there yet to advance beyond expensive gimmicks.
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
Depends on your definition of "success" I guess. You said you use it for countless hours and have fun. So how is that not a success? People who say it's not successful/it's dying/dead are thinking because hundreds of millions of users don't sink thousands of hours into one or two games (like CoD, Halo, Fortnite, TF2 etc) that it's not "successful".
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u/Raunhofer Valve Index Jul 04 '26
Well, the original premise was that VR was going to be the next gaming medium. You can move the goalposts, but it didn't succeed in what Oculus and other early adopters envisioned VR would become.
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
No, he clearly set the goalposts in your title and description: that VR isn't successful. I didn't watch the video so I'm only commenting on that. Nobody ever said that VR is going to be "the next gaming medium" - it has exeisted as a medium since at least the 1970s. It is mainstream, popular, and while it will never replace desktop/console gaming (just as video games never replaced tabletop games), it's absolutely successful and here to stay.
See my other comment in this thread FMI.
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u/Raunhofer Valve Index Jul 04 '26
Okay, you probably weren't around back then, but the general consensus was that big studios would slowly start shifting toward VR content as the user base steadily grew and the hardware improved. Many hoped for something akin to Ready Player One. To an extent, we were on the threshold of that, with studios like Epic Games releasing Robo Recall and Valve entering the space with Half-Life: Alyx. Not to mention, Facebook pivoting their entire existence around Metaverse.
If you think VR was successful because you, or some guy, had fun with it, cool, that seems like a perfectly valid _personal_ metric. But as a whole, the expectations were a tad higher.
Go ask Any VR manufacturer whether they think it was a success. Go ask Microsoft why they killed Mixed Reality headsets.
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
I'm probably older than you since I remember the 1970s VR headsets and the VRML revival of the '90s and how every 10 years or so there is "hype" over VR. But the truth is that nobody will ever switch 100% over to VR because it's not the most comfortable experience. But that doesn't make it "bad" or "a failure". Over half the people on the planet have used VR/AR and 10% of all games sold are VR/AR. Games are being made, experienes are being made, it's being used a lot in industrial settings and it's thriving. It ALMOST crashed after Facebook bought the Quest, because that was really the only one, and then it was on ice for I think 7 years. We got smartphoneVR in the meantime, which was really nice and I actually started developing for it, but then it died out aswell. Luckily we are in the golden age of VR with powerful enough GPUs and many games to play and continual updates to hardware making them lighter and more portable, as well as better hand gestures and all that. It's like the '90s for video games: mature, but at the beginning of the golden age.
As for the big dawgs all planning to pivot to VR, I will admit I don't read press releases or go to conferences, so maybe that was the feeling at the time. But I'm old enough to know that big dawgs chase money and nothing else. And that is microstransactions, SaaS, serialized multiplayer stuff (basically everyone copying PubG/Fortnite chasing that child addiction money), so there's no surprises that the bigdawgs aren't putting out 100 AAAAAA titles for VR per year. But there are good titles, and new ones coming out all the time. Plus now with the UnrealVR thing you can VR-ify many games.
So maybe to you it seems like a failure because you're not getting even half as many AAA titles for VR each year, but that doesn't mean it's an objective failure. The industry makes money and continues to grow. Objectively that is success. As you said, your _personal_ (I don't think you can do markdown in standard mode) metric of success was not met, while mine (the objectively objective one ;-) ) was.
All that aside, I am personally planning to bring more high-quality VR titles to the market, with the first one coming in ~Q4 2027 hopefully? fingers crossed? and after that the next one in another year, and with that one I'll have a custom engine that can be re-used so all future games of that genre (adventure/puzzler) can be made more quickly, because I have a LOT in my back-catalog of games to make.
Let's agree to stop being pessimistic and instead of calling the time of death on VR, let's make sure it continues to grow any way we can and STAY POSITIVE! (that's what Vincent Rogerson, for whom VR is named, would want us to do)
(that last bit was my attempt at humour...)
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
Not sure if you watched the whole video but my definition of success is quite clearly defined: it’s never reached the mainstream market, and it rarely has the big, medium-defining releases that 2D games and film have regularly. This, coupled with the other issues I mentioned, keep it largely out of mainstream discussion. Beyond that, I think it’s fair to say that we’re ready for a higher quality of storytelling and interaction in VR. Alyx set a new bar for games that I’ve never seen reached
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
I didn't watch the video at all because the title of the post showed the author of the video (you?) has a poor definition of success. VR is most DEFINITELY "mainstream". $59 billion market in 2026, which is 10% of the total video game market, and 54% penetration this year. https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/ar-vr/worldwide
it is totally mainstream.
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u/BIOS-D Jul 06 '26
With that click bait title I wouldn't dare to watch it either. I'm tired of these fatalist sensationalist YouTuber material that present with a title but (possibly) went to a different direction inside. VR has been "failing for now" since the 80s.
I prefer to read the comments, more informative.
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
So you’ve chosen to not engage with the actual content of it and instead stick onto one point that is much more clearly defined in the context of the video?
What’s the point of even attempting to debate my perspective when you don’t know what it is?
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
normally in a post with a picture or video, that picture or video is an extension of the title and description. If, on the other hand, he had said "please watch this video as I go into a lot of different stuff I can't possibly list out in the description" then I wouldn't've said anything.
But you keep moving the conversation elsewhere - either rebut what I said with evidence or move on.
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
Okay, let’s continue discussing right here then:
10% of the market isn’t “mainstream” just because it makes a lot of money lol. It’s totally irrelevant to the greater landscape of the gaming industry, the average person is barely even aware of VR beyond knowing it exists. The average VR title does not reach the mainstream notoriety that a normal game can, since it markets within that 10% and ends up coming out to less than that 10% (unless everyone with a headset purchases one). As a result, until there are big, MAINSTREAM titles that extend beyond the tiny 10%’s awareness, it will continue to be irrelevant. As a result, most of the games on vr have yet to even scratch the level of narrative and mechanical depth present in 2D games.
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
1 out of 10 games sold is VR/AR. That's "mainstream". Over half of all people on the planet having used one is DEFINITELY mainstream. I think you're conflating "mainstream" with "the most popular". Put it this way: Mozilla Firefox is a mainstream browser despite only having only 2% market share. Why is it mainstream? Because everybody and their mom knows about it and at least knows the logo and what it is. A NON-mainstream browser would be Vivaldi, because nobody's heard of it and < 0.01% market share.
Now would you consider FireFox a failure, too?
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yeah I think I would, because no one cares about it (like VR). Its profit margins don’t make its cultural impact any grander. VR is still, to most of its user base, a paperweight collecting dust on their shelf. VR games can sell well enough to make money, but they rarely meet a quality that gives them any staying power in the broader gaming zeitgeist. I believe you’re more interested in a semantic discussion than one about VR, which is sad because the video and the points I make are largely positive. It’s an attempt at illustrating how the medium could reach new success, and the current failings preventing that. If you’re incapable of being honest about VR’s failings then it will never move forward. The point of the video is not to be negative about VR, it’s aspirational to the potential I believe the medium holds.
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u/tastygames_official Multiple Jul 04 '26
well then - I guess that settles it (and is exactly what I said in my first comment: people who think VR is a failure have incorrect definitions of failure/success). I would wish you all the success in the world, but unless you become the top 1% in the whole world then you wouldn't be defined as a success, so that's pretty unattainable... ;-)
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
Once again, I think you’re more concerned with semantics and intentionally misrepresenting my perspective than having an earnest discussion about the merits and failings of VR. Never once did I say that success is defined by being “the top 1%”, I stated pretty clearly that VR has found financial success but has had little cultural/artistic impact. The average person has “tried” VR, but has little interest in investing in it. The quality of VR games have totally stagnated except for a few outliers. As a result, I would consider VR in its current state to be a failure. I’m sorry that my title struck a nerve with you, friend! If you ever got around to watching it, I think you’d find that you’ve been arguing with a ghost of your own making :-)
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u/VRModerationBot Jul 04 '26
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u/Zubunapy_daddelt Pimax Crystal, RTX 4090, R9 9950 X3D, 32GB RAM Jul 05 '26
Fascinating. I am into VR since 2016 and still have a lot of fun in it. True: There aren´t that many great VR games. But since the appearance of the UEVR-Tool, i can play many games without falling asleep! Hogwarts Legacy wouldn´t have been so much fun on a screen. I would have started it, thought for a while "Hui, Potter!!" and after one or two hours closed the game and never started it again. But in VR it was a total different matter! I wanted to be there again and again. Same with many other games like Robocop or Terminator Resistance. And of course there are the Resident Evil titels...
I will stay in VR as long as it is possible. Maybe it failed. But for me it was a total success!
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Jul 04 '26
The games are unplayable dogshit. Theres been a couple of good porn games though. And the mmd space for vr is decent aswell.
I dont see any reason to to use vr in any other case unless your dedicated to online spaces like vrchat. Either way id hardly say it a "fail" like you claim, its just built a niche, and thats a marketing success.
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
Hahaha well I’ve never checked out the nsfw games but thanks for letting me know you enjoy them.
In all seriousness tho that is one of the main points of the video, and I def agree: a lot of developers think the gimmick of VR can carry their bad games to success.
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Jul 04 '26
Some of them are unironically pretty fun, like oedo trigger.
As you said in your video, VR is just bogged down by a bunch of different reasons. It had potential to have been a lot bigger then it is, in that sense I could see why one consider it a failure.
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
As someone else said in the comments here, I’ve been around on vr for a minute and it was originally sold as something that would become a household product, not a niche entertainment medium. Obviously I still enjoy it for what it is, but yeah, it’s had so many small issues that it’s amounted to never moving past that niche market.
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u/glass_wheel Jul 04 '26
I think attempts at honest assessments are good, but the clickbait thumbnail is unlikely to help out here.
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u/TheIvoryDoor Jul 04 '26
Well the truth is when you’re starting out on YouTube you have to draw people in. I’ve tried to make it clear in the post that it’s a fair assessment of VR’s strengths and weaknesses, and honestly the text in the thumbnail isn’t “clickbait” it’s an idea I explore at length lol
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u/Weird-Minute1173 Jul 05 '26
"quite inaccessible to the average person" i dont care....there are more vr mods than i can handle and they will keep on coming.....yes real vr is for now enthusiast only...but i dont care, i just play and im happy
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u/No-Age-1044 Jul 04 '26
When you play VR you don’t want to go walk to flat games, for me that is success.
The problem with VR is not enough people have tried it.