There isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t want the VR industry to succeed (and if you do happen to be one of those people who don’t, gtfo) and do so in as massive a manner as Ron Jeremy’s uncomfortably large schlong, but is it a possibility that things are still a little too undeveloped in the VR world to count 2016 as the year when the VR industry explodes (like Ron Jeremy’s uncomfortably long schlong)?
Well, let’s just take a step back and take a look at a few of the facts.
When it comes to predicting the success of a such a new and powerful medium as Virtual Reality, it isn’t a stretch by any means to see that the potential for something huge is there. VR headsets are being touted as the new go-to devices for not only immersive entertainment, but are widely being heralded as ushering in a new age of computing in such areas as architecture and the medical industry as well, and with good reason. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few detractors who believe VR is just a fad that is doomed to failure much in the same way as the 3DTV’s of yesteryear (John Walker from Rock Paper Shotgun comes to mind), but the large majority of those individuals seem to be both horribly misinformed and/or they have never actually tried any of the new VR devices themselves, and they are basing their biased purely on their assumptions of a technology they do not understand.
Thankfully, we don’t really have to worry too much about them as the large majority seems to be willing to bet that VR is here to stay in a big way (myself included).
So this isn’t so much a question of whether or not VR will succeed, but rather whether or not it will succeed as early as we hope, when there are still so many barriers to mass-adoption like cost (the CV1 carries a somewhat hefty $500 US pricetag, and that’s before the as-of-yet-unknown price of the yet-to-be-released VR Touch controllers and/or the cost of a new PC capable of running it) and the still yet to be solved (but somewhat alleviated in newer iterations) issue of motion sickness.
While the latter is a big issue for a small number of people, the former is a much larger issue. Regardless how good of a deal these headsets are considering just how fresh the tech is and what it can do, when the cost of entry is going to be close to $1500 (Rift, Touch controllers and a new PC) for many, you can bet that there will be a lot of people waiting until prices come down, which could be a matter of years for some (yes, I am aware there are cheaper options but trust me when I tell you they aren’t anywhere near as good).
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe in VR of course (I already said I did), while I don’t necessarily think that VR is going to be a massive thing this year, I still think it will be quite successful. If the speed at which HTC sold Vive units when they first opened up their sales page (15,000 sold in the first 10 minutes) is any indicator of what is to come, it would be foolish to think otherwise. But we are still a ways off from seeing your average Tom, Jack and Andy sitting around on a Saturday night playing VR games in the living room while their parents lay in bed watching 360° episodes of the up-and-coming VR TV program Click.
Also, there is VR Porn and we all know that horny people are willing to spend money on things they wouldn’t otherwise purchase right? 
