This is why VR is a game changer.

[Nuvendil]

Intrinsic said:

Nuvendil said:
I actually don't see VR in the foreseeable future being a major force in the common gaming consumer experience. There will be a niche who will buy in, but I think at best it will be the new Kinect: enter with a bang and fade with a sigh.

However, I do think VR has a place. For example, I think that arcade-like locations could be built around this. A VR center where you could pay a set amount and have a set time to play VR games. Like a competitive Valkyrie tournament or Hawken. You could have shorter story driven experiences that sort of travel around locations, which wouldn't be hard to do since the sites could just download them.

I don't see how they are mutually exclusive. What you have just described is exactly what was haooenning before consoles came to fore. We had the arcades with bite sized difficult experiences, then all of a sudden you could have the arcades in your living room. I don't see how what you just said couldn't also work for consoles or PC. if its good enough for people to go somewhere and pay money for a quick skill based fix, then why wouldn't they prefer buying the game and playing at home whenever they want? 

I have a hard time envisioning a parent buying a child something that completely secludes him from the real world, which is how this will be perceived and to a degree rightly so.  There's also the awkwardness of the whole thing.  People are self conscious beings; the thought of them waving there arms around in the real world to interact in a virtual space while people in the real world just see them waving their arms around?  There's a good chance a lot of people won't be comfortable with that so the VR potential is limited to more simplistic experiences that wouldn't involve the sophisticated 3D movement that is being pushed as a major part of VR.  And then there's the issue of the social disconnect that VR inherently brings.  If you are an adult with a family, putting on a full face mask and sound proof headphones would just be odd and also potentially a bad idea if you have small children.  These headsets will also cost almost as much as a console, so there's a significant entrance fee here.  Basically, I would say the difference here between old arcades and consoles is that guying the VR headset would be the equivalent of buying an arcade cabinet, with all the clunkiness and impracticality that entails.