A look at what could be holding back VR, as a breakthrough moment seems unlikely to materialize despite ripe conditions and nearly a decade of big bets on VR
We tried VR in the 1980s, and it didn't work. The idea may have been great, but the technology of the day was nowhere close to delivering it … Tweets: @rafat , @mikeconnery , @l4stewar , @robenkleene , @stefanlesser , @helgeklein , @leonlinsx , @romchamp , @bernardleong , @n8brown , and @benedictevans Tweets: @rafat : Great, intuitive analysis by @benedictevans: This should have been a VR moment, and it isn't. Does that tell us anything? https://www.ben-evans.com/... Mike Connery / @mikeconnery : This should have been VR's shining moment, but it isn't. https://www.ben-evans.com/... Leigh Stewart / @l4stewar : UNPERSUASIVE! i dont think zuck or anyone thinks __VR__ will become the next major computing platform. weird the author to spend so many words contemplating the platform and barely even mention AR. https://www.ben-evans.com/... Roben Kleene / @robenkleene : “Smartphones are broad and universal, whereas consoles are deep and narrow, and deep and narrow is a smaller market [...] we have to assume that VR will be a subset of the games console.” https://www.ben-evans.com/... Stefan Lesser / @stefanlesser : “Are we where smartphones were before the iPhone? All of the core technology was there - we had apps and touch screens and fast data networks and so on - but we needed a change in the paradigm to package them all up in a much more accessible form.” https://www.ben-evans.com/... Helge Klein / @helgeklein : The VR winter by @benedictevans “The problem is, we haven't worked out what you would do with a great VR device and it's not clear that we will.” https://www.ben-evans.com/... Leon Lin / @leonlinsx : 1/9 “The Oculus is more like the Apple Newton than the iPhone” Why @benedictevans thinks there's a VR winter: https://www.ben-evans.com/... https://twitter.com/... Romain Champetier / @romchamp : « it's instructive that now that we're all locked up at home, video calls have become a huge consumer phenomenon, but VR has been not. This should have been a VR moment, and it isn't. » — latest blog post from @benedictevans on the next #VR winter https://www.ben-evans.com/... Bernard Leong / @bernardleong : The VR Winter via @benedictevans https://www.ben-evans.com/... #VR #QOTD “The problem is, we haven't worked out what you would do with a great VR device that isn't a game (or some very niche industrial application), and it's not clear that we will.” Nathan Brown / @n8brown : “The successor to the smartphone will be something that doesn't just merge AR/VR but make the distinction irrelevant -something that you can wear all day every day, and that can seamlessly both occlude and supplement the real world and generate indistinguishable volumetric space” https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : New post - The VR winter. Why isn't this a VR moment? What would you have to believe? https://www.ben-evans.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Writing at the height of the 2020 lockdowns, Benedict Evans posed an uncomfortable question: if ever there was a moment for VR, with everyone stuck at home and nearly a decade of Oculus-era investment behind it, this was it — and still no breakthrough came. His answer traced back to the same hardware ceiling that has shadowed every headset generation since the 1980s attempts he opens with.
The later coverage validates the diagnosis rather than overturning it. Stratechery had already flagged the usage mismatch behind Facebook's Oculus acquisition — VR demands deliberate, all-consuming sessions while Facebook's business runs on casual ones — and by 2023 Evans was arguing that even Apple's Vision Pro confirmed devices like Meta's Quest remain gaming hardware absent a step change in capability. By early 2023 Meta itself had pivoted from metaverse hype to efficiency, and 2025 studio interviews show developers shipping into declining Quest game sales as Meta tilts toward Horizon Worlds.
First-order effects
- Meta's bet is exposed on both fronts at once: the pandemic failed to convert non-gamers, and its own studios report declining game sales on Quest as the company redirects attention to Horizon Worlds.
- Apple's entry with Vision Pro, rather than rescuing the category, becomes evidence for Evans's thesis — a premium device that still cannot break VR out of the gaming market without a capability leap.
Second-order effects
- Developers shipping on Quest face a shrinking addressable audience inside a walled garden whose owner is deprioritizing their segment, pushing studios toward Horizon Worlds or away from dedicated VR titles altogether.
- Each flagship launch now gets judged against the 'not good enough' benchmark Evans set, forcing Meta and Apple to compete on incremental capability claims in a market where the decisive step change has not arrived.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, VR consolidates as a niche gaming peripheral rather than a general computing platform, and the industry's capital rotates toward whatever the next candidate interface is — with each hardware generation re-running the same test instead of clearing the bar.
- The recurring failure mode — great idea, insufficient technology — positions hardware capability, not content or demand, as the binding constraint regulators and investors should watch when weighing any immersive-computing thesis.
The trend: A decade of VR investment keeps colliding with the same hardware and usage-pattern ceilings, so each new device cycle — Quest, Vision Pro — re-tests the breakthrough thesis rather than resolving it.