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Comment by an4rchy | Hacker News Reader

One of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of VR seems to be the cost.

Is there a reason why it doesn't make sense for the manufacturers to do a subscription service? Seems like everything from phones and consoles to game streaming subscriptions is the trend (and makes sense).

If nothing else, it can help increase distribution and awareness -- at the end of the day, more people using the devices is probably gonna kick off more content creation and economies of scale to produce cheaper/better hardware.

Thoughts?

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I doubt if there's a strong market for VR even if a great headset was $50. Do people who are not enthusiasts really want to immerse themselves like this? A good chunk of the population doesn't seem interested even in game consoles. I imagine a subset of them are interested in VR gaming. Outside of VR gaming, there's little mainstream content designed for VR.

Potentially the audience for VR could be bigger than the audience for consoles as it opens up entire categories of non-gaming applications. Experiential, narrative, educational, social etc.

I've had very positive responses to VR from people that have never had any interest in traditional gaming.

Of course - whether this interest could be translated to purchase is a different question. Ease of use and cost would help as would a wide and diverse library of mainstream content.

I think a good stepping stone would be pervasive VR in schools, libraries, galleries etc. to get people accustomed to the medium.

Except for experiential, why aren't those categories already open on consoles?

Marketing?

Because consoles offer literally nothing over desktops for that, and schools, libraries, etc already have desktops?

true... what does VR offer in those categories over desktops?

Better IO?

There's almost certainly educational value in being able to view (and sometimes interact) with a 3d model of a cell/organ/body/physics simulation/3d chemical model/...

it's different... not sure it's better.

Neglecting inflation, amortization does not make it any cheaper.

I think it's fairly safe to say that for the general populace, that doesn't matter. If it's cheaper up front, people act like it's cheaper overall.

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