Eric Johnson over at Re/Code has reported : At Investor Event, VR Startups Brace for Slow Growth. The article centres around venture capitalists who seem a tad reluctant to buy into the Virtual Reality hype cycle at this moment in time.
UploadVR co-founder Nick Ochoa told the venture capitalists that they looked nervous and a report being prepared by his site backs this claim up. 164 venture capitalists have invested in VR companies until now, but 142 of them have done so only once.
Caution does seem to be the order of the day, Eric quotes High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale as saying :
We will probably see lower adoption than everyone expects in the next year or so, but it will pick up,……My advice is, don’t overspend right now. Stock up for three or four years.
This seems to be a very sensible stance to take. VR has a lot of potential and a lot of exciting scope, but it has not yet delivered.
There is a fear that the hype cycle this time around seems to be on fast forward, which possibly explains why the venture capitalists are keeping their hands on their wallets. People are awaiting the use cases that will prove that there’s more to this than hype.
However too much caution will be as damaging to VR as too much hype. A balance needs to be struck. I still remain unconvinced that people will happily wear headsets for hours on end for a VR use case. The thing there is that use cases being what they are, use cases will evolve that none of us are expecting right now and those will be the use cases that take the technology forward.
There are plenty of people who remain very excited about VR. Two great places to read about the hope, the hype and the reality (virtual or otherwise) are Upload VR and Road To VR.
Whether VR makes it this time around, it’s far too early to say. I fear people got a little too excited by news of devices such as the Oculus Rift. Patience is the key here, let’s see how this all evolves.
Whether you’re a naysayer or extremely excited about VR, caution is the best path to tread at the moment.