I work in San Francisco in an office with multiple tech companies. VR/AR is about 99.9% invisible. It's occasionally mentioned by developers/gamers upon returning from GDC. Otherwise, it's completely off peoples' radars. I think the technology has potential, but claiming it's "the next iPhone" is inaccurate. It remains to be seen.

Or, we see so many game-breaking limitations (cost, FOV, resolution, VR sickness) and are tired of the "give it 5 years" rhetoric that assumes magic will happen to fix it.

Or we're simply not convinced that what it offers is that much better than a regular old computer screen. How does VR change my daily activity of programming? Of watching movies? Of reading books?

And VR sickness is not really a thing for the vast majority of people. It gets hyped up by the press a lot. I've put hundreds of people through intense VR experiences over thirty or forty minutes long. In that time, ONE person had issues. I've seen higher proportions of people get nauseous from regular, first-person shooter PC games.

I know not a single person that has 9x9 to 12x12 sq ft of space to dedicate to room scale VR.

On top of that, having played many of the games I can t imagine playing them for more than 15-20 minutes at a time. They're tiring. I can play a game I'm really into for 8-12 hours in one day for 4-5 days straight but I can't imagine that in VR at all

I think there is potential as a tool. 3d modeling inside VR could be a 10x or 100x time saver. But, mass market entertainment seems very very unlikely.

VR is an activity. The effort to use VR is a magnitude more than the effort to use a TV, Laptop or Desktop, and those are a magnitude more effort than using a phone.

VR is more like a Wii or a Kinect than a phone, except it's significantly harder to use than either of those.

The current batch of first generation devices obviously have shortcomings, and the price, lack of apps and shortcomings will make them early adopter devices. It's obvious that VR has come a long way in 20 years though, and the next few steps forward will make these into mass market devices.

On Youtube is a demo of Medium, a sculpting app, used by artists. I used this myself on Oculus Rift. They said it can sculpt 3d objects you can't easily do on a PC or in real life. It's like Photoshop or Illustrator or some CAD app, with the left hand being the toolbar and the right hand drawing and sculpting. It may be primitive but is useful now. VR is here.

The reason iTunes/AppStore took off and became profitable has more to do with their monetization models rather than the technology involved.