This is a major logical fallacy I've faced in "engineering". Technical challenges and effort are irrelevant to the consumer: their contract is the exchange of disposable income for something that they get pleasure / function out of in a way that is measurable against the investment. If you've spent years and invested everything in something that sucks, then it sucks until someone evolves it into something that doesn't. That is why first to market is not always the golden ticket.

What you've identified is a primal dismissing of criticism as a discussion technique with any merit. The same could be directed back at your comment, which would create a funny but useless negative feedback loop. As in, your criticism of the author for not having an engineering background means nothing because if you have an engineering background you're not qualified to render an opinion of a journalistic enterprise.

When you've been deep into R&D and then translating that into a shipping product, it's very easy to not realize that you've been building a product which simply nobody wants or just isn't right.

Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but that's why you often need external pragmatic perspective, like from the WSJ.

He wrote a review for the mainstream person, who is not interested in the challenges of building the product, but rather how good it is.

I doubt they'd disagree. It's not ready for the main stream. But It is ready for the hardcore niche audience that will build $1000+ dollar machines to power a $600 headset.

All is according to plan.

I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy VR unless they have tons of extra money sitting around and know exactly what they're getting. And I pre-ordered the Oculus on day one. It's not for everyone. I think there are two kinds of people here -- people who have been waiting for this their whole lives, and people who should probably wait until it gets cheaper.

There's nothing particularly new in this article. All of these criticisms have been obvious for years. Oculus/FB seem as if they don't care and are deliberately targeting hardcore gamers. Presumably they know what they're doing.