The DeanBeat: The road ahead in VR and AR will have two steps forward, one step back

John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies, predicted that tech journalists would start gleefully writing that the virtual reality revolution is over because sales of VR headsets fell short of expectations, and analysts are in the midst of shaving back their predictions. I’m not one of those journalists. For AR and VR, I see 2017 as a year full of two steps forward, one step back and two steps back and one step forward. It’s a complex market with winners and losers for a technology that could change the world and many industries beyond gaming. It’s not a fizzling bubble that is going to disappear like 3D glasses.

Yet I see the market at a point of confusion, poised between action and inaction. Speaking at the recent VRX virtual reality event in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, Riccitiello wasn’t gleeful about it, but he noted he was right about the “gap of disappointment” at our GamesBeat Summit event in May. Back in May, he said, “From a hardware and a software perspective, it’s a masking tape and twine year. These things are barely making it to the shelf. They’re barely making it to the consumer. They do magical things. I’m a giant bull on the long-term opportunities for VR and AR. But these revenue forecasts for the early years — they’re going to miss their numbers in 2016 by 80 percent. They’ll miss them again in 2017 by 60 percent or more.”