Erm,...no?
VR plays hardly any role on the market.
There's also no "pushing" going on - that I am aware of.

Okay, explain the billions of dollars that Meta (the company) is setting on fire to push Meta (the VR platform)?

Why should I care about Meta?
And why do you care?

Becaue they are making a shitton of money out of it.

That was easy, next question?


edit. You may as well aks "why does Sony spend billions on developing PlaySTation" oe "Why does Nintendo spend billions developing the Wii"

No. Zuckerberg is hoping to make bank with it at some point (which most in the company don't see happening). Right now Meta is bleeding billions left and right. It has lost over 50 billion dollars with the VR division since 2020 and just this spring Zuckerberg's announcement of continued and increased Metaverse focus lost it another 200 billion dollars in stock market value.

Zuckerberg is chasing an idea of VR that just doesn't work in the real world and unless he faces the facts that this is not the next iPhone moment he will lose his company either by it going the way of the dodo or by being forced out.

It is not doing badly. It is hard to get the exact numbers, but the Quest 2 apparently sold just over 20M headsets, which is around the same numbers th Xbox did. Quest 2 is still the most used VR headset (I think the Index is the second) but since Quest 3 was just released, they have been creeping up as well, they also apparently passed 1M headsets sold last month. Then on top you you have the revenue from the app store itself (they have managed to snag some really good exclusive games there).

What they are loosing money on is all the silly Metaverse developments and those grand plans with little grounding and whatnots. If they stuck with just producing the headsets and the app store, then I do think the numbers would be different

(but then again, it is how things progress, so if they have the money to burn on those experiments I am not giong to complain)

Takes too much space to set one up, especially when the games you use to play it with require you to move your body a lot. I only see it as a logical choice when you use VR simply to enhance the first person view experience for games that put the player in the shoes of someone controlling or piloting a vehicle. Like racing games or flight simulator games.

Its always been a gimmick honestly in my view as despite VR has been a thing for consumers sense the 80's and while the tech has gotten noticeably more ''standard vr'' view most of us has envisioned it as in fiction but its a long way from not being a gimmick or cash grab as its in general still quite pricey in terms of vr thats not locked down to a specific tech/software ecosystem

I would probably only get close to it if both the hardware and softwares used were fully open source without any kind of telemetry.
Eye tracking telemetry is 'absurdily' scarier because eye movement tells a lot more about your brain than people think.

So giving all this kind of info freely for some hours of fun that would probably give me motion sickness and headaches in the end? Nah thanks. :P

Many VR games look really nice to play though. :)

That's the main point. Facebook bought Oculus and Suckerberg threw money at it like a trebuchet. VR became a closed environment (Quest games cannot be played otherwise) and the leading VR device is powered by smartphone specs, so the graphical quality is comparable to a potato. VR was only ‘feasible’ for Facebook because the losses were offset with Facebook's advertising money. Massive market manipulation. Useful studios for VR games were either bought up directly or were given deals so that only ‘quest exclusive’ games had been released. Studios such as Downpour were bought up and their games, such as Onward, were questified, i.e. deliberately worsened graphically and in some cases content was removed that did not work with the quest.
Half Life Alyx was the last big game. When games are released for VR, they also have to run with the Quest because that's the biggest market. This means that the technology has to be cut back and the games remain miles below their potential, which they could achieve with a real computer.

To the surprise of no one here, you don’t know what you are talking about.

The numbers you shared barely amount to rounding errors compared to overall video games sales.

Its an interesting concept and I hope the technology continues to evolve further but I dont think I personally will ever get involved in it.

First, the games it would be good for would be first-person games. I prefer third person so the games that would interest me are already more limited. Also not really a big FPS fan which is likely what the majority of commerical games will be geared toward.

Second, motion sickness. I already get quesy with certain games and can only play them for an hour or two before I feel like throwing up. Could be due to age and I dont know exactly why (I can play Gravity Rush 1 just fine but 2 gets me quesy after a couple of moments despite both having the same gameplay loop or I get sick driving in Mad Max but am completely fine driving in GTA). I know VR's biggest struggle is motion sickness so I likely wont be able to play for it that long.

Finally, I wear glasses and the few times Ive tried VR, wearing the headset with glasses hasnt been the most comfortable. Add to that the close screen and it gets hot in that VR set.

It's more tiresome than fun... at least for me.