Is Virtual Reality the next 3D TV?

We saw the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle. Then came broadband streaming, leaving traces of Blu-ray artifacts in the living room, too precious and expensive to be thrown away like their predecessor CD-Roms. Fast forward to 2010 and the dawn of 3D TV. You wouldn’t be able to walk through a Best Buy without a few ooo-aah from the spectator. Trendsetters dreamt of possessing these TVs in their home theaters, to put on those 3D glasses, kick the nest and get “immersed” in the Avatar world - 3D Edition. That also died, leaving an even more expensive dent in the consumers’ wallet. People started to wonder how these investments make sense if they would only be around for a short few years.

2016 and virtual reality is in full force, a technology so “real” and “immersive” that it makes virtual reality better than the real reality. As gaming becomes mainstream (check out the 11,000 spectators at the World Championship of League of Legends at Madison Square Garden), gamers are driving the demand for bigger and better technology so they can become the characters they play. Big players jumped into the space, with Facebook Oculus’s Rift, Google’s cardboard, Samsung VR Gear, and Microsoft’s HoloLens driving development at a rapid pace. The results so far are quite hallucinatory.

But how long will this fever last? Can the gaming and geek culture carry VR into main stream culture? Who will win and who will lose and will VR become just another expensive shinny toy in a geeky vintage collectibles? I still ask myself: Is Virtual Reality the next 3D TV?