You started off making some good points.  I could see what your position was (even if it didn't change my mind; was good to read).  This was all going nicely at first.

Unfortunately, your last sentences/blurb at the end just had to make a left turn into ad hominem territory.

These might have all be borderline valid points at one moment in time, but they're quickly becoming those VR myths you read about in forums made up be people who aren't interested in or do not have the funds for virtual reality.

The moment you suggested/implied that my lack of interest in VR was due to my income (or lack thereof), your entire point became worthless.  You became nothing more than an exclusionary egotistical arrogant shill for whatever VR company/companies you work for to write this 'informational article'.

Maybe you are a legit VR enthusiast that wants others to enjoy the tech.  However I don't see it that way.  You might as well paint your face like a clown and put on a wig while using your hoity-toity sneering voice about how I'm not 'hardcore' enough.

If engaging in the VR community means dealing with the likes of you, then I'll gladly opt-out.  I've got more than enough standard non-VR games to play.  I've got more than enough single player games to play, most of them by awesome indies who deserve far more love than some overpriced trash that'll be relegated to the annals of gaming history as yet another 'failed peripheral'.

Please do tell me where you get that '5 million VR headsets' from.  Barely 1% of total Steam users bother to use VR headsets on Steam, the largest and most prominent PC gaming storefront for the platform.  Now if there are people who only play standalone non-Steam games that have VR then I can dig it, but I don't see many other stores having a significant selection of VR games.  Now 1% of ~15 million ACTIVE Steam users is barely 150k who would have a VR headset that Steam detects.  Far far south of the '5 million' that you've claimed.  But let's even presume 5 million headsets; how many people actually buy games for em?  ;)

The biggest problem was that the headset creators and hardware manufacturers don't care about games or experiences.  They want to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible.  They aren't in this for the long haul.  They sell hardware to people with more money than sense (hello Microsoft Kinect, hello Playstation Eye, hello Nintendo Power Glove; they're all 'so bad').

Dear Daedalus007,

Before bursting in to a fit of rage at what was supposed to be a reasonable debate, please understand a few things concerning my response to your initial comments. Firstly I do not work for a VR company, I work for Opium Pulses and am and have been a great admirer and fan of virtual reality for a long time, I write articles like these in my own time for enjoyment, not for any other reason. Whether you subscribe to that truth or not is down to you, but it’s important to know before you judge my entire character.

The PSVR sales are reported by countless news outlets online, a quick google will give you some stats to wade through, remember this is a console-based VR headset that cannot connect to or be detected by Steam – then there’s Oculus based headsets (GearVR, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift) that have their own storefront and while the more expensive Rift can make use of a selection of games in the Steam store, the former two headsets, cannot. Steam VR titles are mostly aimed more at the HTC Vive, arguably the most expensive and free-space-hungry headset.

Neither my article nor comments were set to prove that VR is selling like hotcakes, far from, it was simply a response to your estimated 0.00001%. I can’t however respond to the points you make out of what seems like sheer anger as I can’t see that I’ll make any reasonable headway there, but you too, also make some good points so I’ll address those before anything else.

It’s true, VR is still a niche hobby and a lot of gamers have probably never touched the technology, let alone considered investing in it, however I don’t think it’s fair to say that because less than 1% of gamers are using VR on a particular platform that means that the few that are, are toying with something that couldn’t be worthwhile for many others. VR has a lot to offer and while it’s subjective and down to opinion, I do think its worth being stated more by people who have actually given it a fair chance.

I disagree with your statements about manufacturers not caring about the experiences of their users, just looking in to the history of Oculus and the people behind it (their ambitions etc) will give you a different angle on that perspective, but again, I imagine you feel pretty strongly about this already so I shan’t put too much more energy in to that.

To address the paragraph you quoted of me, I’ll admit upon re-reading I wasn’t quite comfortable with the wording myself (no one is perfect), this wasn’t supposed to be a summary of you or the type of personal you are, and more a statement on where I find the origin for most of these opinions are born. Personally I don’t believe they make fair debate and only serve to negatively prod those who have a positive belief in something.  I only debate from corners in which I have experience and I personally just think that makes the for a lot less needless arguments.

but it’s worth knowing that even I, cannot afford any full tethered VR experience, I’ve spent a lot of time with them however so feel I know enough to see both their potential and value and compare them to the mobile counterparts. I have however had a lot of experience with mobile VR headsets and have compared my own (GearVR) with competing headsets of my friends and family, hence this article.

I personally believe VR will be the spearhead in a new direction of social interaction online in the years to come and this is the element I’m most excited about, but this is another article for another day. For now, I experiment where I can with the little funds I have and share my experiences for fun.

In saying all of this, I do also apologise for any offense I caused – I assure you it wasn’t intentional.

Looked up who you were.  Now it makes sense lol.  Your response is far more reasonable than I thought it would be.  I've heard the whole 'poor person' sneering backlash from far too many people for far too long to sit by and 'let it happen' again, especially from someone writing for (and working for) a site that should know better.

Oculus was crowdfunded for almost 2.5 million USD on Kickstarter and I believe they had additional funds through other crowdfunding/donation means; a resounding success story in non-digital products.

Facebook then bought the company for 2+ billion USD and proceeded to systematically spit on everyone who 'invested' in the original product.  When I say 'the devs and manufacturers don't care' I actually mean it.  They don't give a single solitary damn about anything other than money.

If any publisher or dev or manufacturer bothered to give a damn about any of their users, it wouldn't have taken 5+ years of VR before they finally made one with an FOV above 100.  They wouldn't have subjected countless test subjects to nausea and intense motion-sickness from their lazy ports and half-hearted attempts at copying ideas from past 'virtual reality' game failures.

I'm absolutely pessimistic about VR as a thing and I see it as nothing more than expensive toys by people with far too much money to spend.  But you know what?  At least they're getting a physical item for their money instead of being a whale and throwing money at gambleboxes.  I'll acknowledge that much.

When VR gets a 'killer app' that makes it worthwhile; when VR is actually able to be tried out and/or demo'd in a controlled setting prior to purchase; when VR doesnt' require a large living space to safely play; when VR becomes AR instead so that we aren't at risk of losing sense of our surroundings entirely...that's when I'll give a damn.

I don't see VR as the future.  I see AR as the future.  AR = Alternate Reality.  Effectively an 'overlay' above the real world but done in such a way as to be entirely convincing otherwise.  We're far away from that kind of tech (maybe in 50 years or so) but I hope we get there.

The problem with VR and AR as concepts is that compulsive game design (skinner boxes, gambling, etc) is already rampant.  To put those mechanics into a VR/AR scenario would potentially cause a collapse of society if enough people are 'addicted' to it and completely lose sense of the real world.  It is bad enough with non-VR and non-AR games; cybercafes in Korea/Japan already let people go in and game to death until someone notices the smell from their corpse.

Do we really want to make things even more immersive?  When is enough gonna be enough?  Just give me my holodeck with 100% full admin rights/control and let me make my own fun, ok?  ;)

I'd like to reiterate that nothing about that quote was a judgement of who you are based on your interest or lack thereof in VR, I understand your disgust in people that dismiss debates based solely on another's income, my point was that many of the misconceptions of VR (in my personal experience), stem from those who have never given it a reasonable amount of their time.

While I agree with a few and disagree with a little more of your opinions, I think we've spoken enough about our own respectively to get our points across. I think we can both agree we'd like to see it develop in to something we can all be rewarded for "giving a damn about", instead of just a small minority of us.

One point I would like to pick up on is that AR stands for Augmented Reality, as in an augmentation to our existing world. Not Alternate Reality, which is essentially just what VR is right now. Sound close, mean very different things. However I too, look forward to see where AR takes us and how it adapts to the world around us.