VR gaming to take a long time to become mainstream

Trusted Reviews had an interview with Palmer Luckey, the 22-year old founder of Oculus Rift virtual reality headset that was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion last year. Luckey believes games will be what launch virtual reality into the public spotlight, because the games industry is uniquely positioned to create an immersive real-time 3D world.

He believes the foundation for VR gaming has been done over the last 10-20 years but acknowledges it's still going to take a long time until VR becomes mainstream. One of the big barriers for VR gaming right now is not really the cost of the headset, but the fact that you need an expensive computer with unlimited GPU horsepower to get the best experience.

“I mean the question is: how fast can virtual reality really take off? Right now, it requires a fairly significant investment in computing hardware, a pretty high-end PC.

“Plus, there’s not a lot of people who have tried virtual reality. Whether or not they think it’s great, or they think it’s not good enough yet, many people just haven’t even been able to make that judgement because they’ve never tried VR.

“Virtual reality is going to take a long time to become something that’s truly mainstream,” he admitted, but quickly added that he’s confident in Oculus’ fans. “You don’t have to be successful in the mass-market mainstream to get started with people who are willing to put on a headset.”

You can read the interview over here.