VR is perhaps like the original Game Boy: Not very powerful, no color screen, but low price and long battery life. It sold a lot, unlike the competition.
For comparison, the various leaks and analyst claims say that the Apple headset is going to have 3x or more the effective resolution of the Pimax 8K, with no dedicated space or desktop computer needed to drive it. That's a gigantic leap past anything that exists on the market right now, and at $3,000 it would be a significantly cheaper buy-in for anyone who doesn't already own a thousand-dollar GPU.
Apple's headset would be cheaper and even higher quality from what it sounds like.
That doesn't seem like the lesson to me. I think the lesson here is: VR is not good enough yet to demand a high price tag. And that's certainly my experience with it as well. It's a fun novelty right now, but not worth dropping a couple grand on. But if someone could push it, and make it, I dunno, twice as good, then I could be willing to spend a whole lot more on it.
The bottom line seems clear: People want a standalone system at low price. That's what the Quest 2 is offering, mostly. I think it could really take off if it was still somewhat cheaper and if it had a lot of exclusive "AAA" games. Say, like the Nintendo Switch.