I'm sure Apple would hit that mass market price appeal with their VR headset.  I bet they are going to light the market on fire with their $350 homepod.  Still waiting on Apple TV to be a major hit... Oh that's right you can buy just as good or better streaming devices for half the price.

Pokemon Go isn't really showcasing anything special with AR.  If you have a look at some of the ARKit demo's foir iOS11 since it's announcement at WWDC last month...there is some seriously good and interesting ideas there.

That isn't saying much.

It doesn't have to be powerful for it to be mainstream, if anything the weaker consoles have generally been the most popular. 

That's besides the point, Pokemon Go had mainstream success. 

I checked out the demo, it's impressive.

No, both already tried back in the 90s.
VR is all but dead again. They're not going to back something they know is bad business.

It'll come around in 10 more years. It has popped up in some form about every 10-15 years for the last 70 years; and the current trend of VR headsets are 25 years old now, and they're not working. No one has made it successful yet.

headsets/helmets are a bad idea. Perhaps when they redefine it again, making it contact lense based, or mind simulation based. But our technology is way off for that.

it doesnt have to be powerful to be mainstream, but it does have to be powerful to be VR. right now only top of the line smart phones are recommended for VR, and after trying out several VR headsets, i can see why. it just isnt easy to effectively pull off without powerful hardware

Not necesarily. Many large companies are incapable of developing a killer apps due to shareholder constraints. They require proof of concept first. Nintendo, in particular, has a nack for producing killer apps, and they have done so over the last 35 years. Apple is the first company to ever release a killer app with the advent of spreadsheets.

A killer app is something that single handedly leads a platform to incredible/dominating success. Super Mario Bros, Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon, Wii Sports. To a smaller extent: Sonic the Hedghog. There are consoles that didn't need a killer app - the original PSX sold well because it had hundreds of games and a strong advertisement campaign, it wasn't Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, Tekken that was a killer app, it was all of them combined, along with 200+ other games in the beginning, and 500+ games when Nintendo was struggling to get out 6 or 7 games on the N64; and they were half the price of N64 games, and gran Turismo games were free with the console after a certain point. VR doesn't necessarily need a killer app either.

Microsoft used to be that sort of company in the past, but have since become a much more cautious company, waiting for other people to do something first before jumping onboard; which has resulted in them lagging behind others who have already taken the market. They have found success by sitting on top of their gains from earlier timeperiods and releasing derivative stuff; but have not been able to break new ground in new markets for a while now. On the videogame front, Rockstar is about the only dev company outside of Nintendo who has released a killer app since about the year 2000. Rockstar began as a former Nintendo second party.

Also, small companies can create killer apps too, one good example is Myst, which sold millions of CD-rom drives.

The reason VR failed isn't a lack of a killer app, it's because the idea of a helmet/headset is a bad one. There are other ways to go about it, we don't have to be stuck with 1991's concepts.

I very much disagree with you. Especially since I wear glasses, and also a helmet while riding long distances. It's not that bad :p

Yet what other ways do you envision? The http://www.broomx.com/mk-player360.php to turn your room into a VR cave? Which has been tried before too and will be a lot more expensive. Or perhaps https://uploadvr.com/red-hydrogen-one-smartphone-holographic/ which is neat to have holograms floating above your phone. It's nothing like VR inside a headset though.

It's already way way beyond what it was in the 90's in terms of popularity and acceptance. VR is going to stick around this time and grow.

Yes, a killer app isn't neccesary but it would help tremendously. Eventually a VR device will be as light as a pair of sunglasses, it's just a matter of time.