Is VR The Future Or A Fad?

VR or Virtual reality has come a long way in recent years. With many devices and titles available too, it seems to be a better time than ever to invest this new technology for gaming on console or PC. That all said, this is one of the slowest adoptions we have seen of new technology in recent years. Is it because of the price, or do people just not believe that VR has a great future? Below, we will discuss the potential future for VR to try and understand if it is worth if for the average consumer now.

VR Adoption

VR has seen a considerable growth of 24% during 2020 and is on track to keep the same pace in 2021, some believe it was due to the lockdowns around the world, others that the tech is simply growing. Regardless of what has caused the growth, it is definitely growth that is needed in the market if VR is to become a stable of the video game industry. There is, right now, little assurance that VR will keep up the current growth rate, however, if it does, we should see a market worth well over $15billion by 2025.

VR Market Hindrances

With an impressive current growth rate, you may find yourself asking why VR has not taken off as quickly as it was expected to. There are a few reasons for this somewhat stinted growth, below we will go over the main factors.

• Content – By far the biggest factor in VR not taking off in the private sector is a lack of content. There are just not enough games, movies or any other forms of media that really make a good use of the equipment. There are some incredible VR games out there, like Valve’s newest addition to the half-life series, Half-Life Alyx. For most average people, though, the amount of content on offer is just not enough to justify the price of the VR equipment.
• Market – In a somewhat interesting situation, a lot of developers and investors believe that the established market for VR is just not big enough to justify the cost of developing new titles. Most of the new games available in the VR sector are done by indie developers, as they are often better able to justify the additional risk.
• User experience – VR is unfortunately just not a simple or easy experience. While some standalone VR sets have in built forms of tracking, most units will require extra cameras and a large free area to function properly. While some VR systems do attempt to make the setup easier, it is not always as simple an experience as one would hope
• Motion sickness – An average of 25% of players experience a sensory conflict resulting in a kind of motion sickness referred to as cybersickness. To make matters worse, those who do experience cybersickness usually do so after just 15 minutes of VR use.

Unfortunately, the content and market problems seem to play against each other. For an immediate solution, either VR equipment would need to see a dramatic price drop, or the amount of content being released for VR would need to see a healthy increase. The latter seems far more likely and will hopefully be the case in upcoming years.

Future Of VR

Even with the problems facing VR market growth, there is still a promising amount of growth happening everywhere from the tragamonedas en linea Chile offers to your standard PC game. Provided more content is created going forward, VR should continue to grow and hopefully stand as the future of media consumption.