Games may not be the killer app for VR | Opinion
Looked at from certain perspectives, the VR/AR market seems to be making steady progress.
Meta continues to launch headsets at mass-market price points, while Apple's insanely expensive Vision Pro, though it's hardly expanding the market much overall at that pricing level, represents another tech giant committing to the space and showcasing technological potential that will rapidly start turning up in cheaper devices. Sony, for its part, is more or less doing its own thing with PSVR 2, but at least seems to remain committed to supporting the device with a software release pipeline.
That's three powerhouse technology and content firms all with impressive headsets on the market; so things are going well, right?
Not according to game developers, it seems – at least not according to those surveyed in research published by Game Developer this week. The headline number here suggests that 56% of developers think the market for VR is declining or stagnating, versus just 23% who see growth.
Wearing my other hat as someone whose job involves running and analysing a lot of opinion polling data, I'm duty bound to point out some limitations of this kind of survey: only a subset of developers will have actual visibility of the commercial performance of VR, for example, with other respondents largely basing their assessment on vibes.
This survey is more useful as an assessment of how likely developers are to consider VR development than as a clear measurement of VR's commercial performance – but even taken just in that light, it's a pretty gloomy readout on a sector that's ostensibly building a major component of the future of gaming.
There's no denying that VR and AR hardware has progressed massively in recent years, and the headsets are now finding applications in all sorts of commercial and industrial settings, which pretty much guarantees that there's a solid future for the technology.
Nonetheless, the negativity of game developers about the prospects for the sector aren't hard to
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