If you didn’t become a VR gamer in 2024, you probably never will

digitaltrends.com:

Like many humiliated tech writers, I have been guilty of writing those seven little words that can haunt you for the rest of your career: “This was the year VR took off.”

Yes, a lot of us wide-eyed armchair analysts have fallen victim to this optimism trap over VR’s long lifespan. Half-Life: Alyx finally brings a complete gaming experience to a headset? VR has taken off. PlayStation introduces its own plug-and-play device? We’re off to the races. Meta invests heavily in games and releases a wireless device that makes them easy to play? It’s all happening! Of course, all of those lofty predictions tend to look like deflated balloons six months later.

So this year, I’m not going to give in. I am not here to tell you that 2024 was the year that VR gaming finally positioned itself for mainstream success. I already kind of did that in 2023 when I wrote about how much developers reinvigorated the tech at the tail end of a rocky year. So instead, I’m going to throw a decade of hope out the window and be pragmatic with you: 2024 was a fantastic year for VR games, and the fact that it still wasn’t enough to win over skeptics means that nothing will.

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2024 in VR gaming

The outlook for VR gaming looked fantastic coming out of 2023’s holiday season, which completely upped the ante for platforms like the Meta Quest 3. Asgard’s Wrath 2 and Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR were both standout titles that showed how far the tech had come. While Sony had already seemingly given up on the PSVR2 by then, there was a sense that Meta’s investments would continue to pay off when it came