I just don't think that the current iteration does anything that a cell phone can't.
Not sure if intended literally, or hyperbole, but there are a few things the current iteration will do that cellphones can't. I've
demod google cardboard and I've
demod gear VR. Gear is more than just a nice piece of plastic. The tracking difference is significant. While neither of my reviews were glowing, there is a clear hardware difference even between those two lower end options.
I've not (yet) demod Rift, Vive or Morpheus. But based on what I've seen and read, there are two significant hardware differences:
* Directional tracking
exists. Cardboard and gear are both purely
rotational experiences. If you walk toward something while wearing them, you don't move any closer to it.
* Input. Input with cardboard is...in my experience anyway, reaching inside to tap the screen. There are models with a single button, but it doesn't work very well. With gear, it's two buttons. Your'e basically using your face as a mouse pointer and clicking on the side of your hear. The vive controllers and oculus touch are nwe hardware input devices that are tracked as part of the experience. Where your hands go in real life, your "hands" go inside the experience. This allows it to be meaningfully interactive. there are videos of people
juggling in vr. Not because it was that was a deliberately designed function. I was following when that was first discovered. Somebody just
tried it and discovered that they could juggle in vr by doing basically the same thing that they do to juggle in real life.
This iteration definitely has capabilities beyond what cardboard is capable of, even when gear vr with its extra accelerometer is capable of.
Probably not worth $400 to the average consumer for a dedicated peripheral (hint- still requires a computer powerful enough to run it, which will be no simple desktop computer purchasable at Walmart
Lots of people have a playstation 4.
Like I said, curious novelty.
Well, we'll see. If you'd asked me in 1980 if by 2000 I'd be able to hop on a daily commercial flight to the moon, I'd probably have said yes. Whereas if you's asked me homeless people would be carrying around videophones capable of playing movies and translating foreign language signs in real time...I'd probably frowned at the weird question and not said yes.
It's hard to predict what will take off and what won't. On the bright side, we probably won't have to wait 20 years to find out whether vr takes off.