I'm fond of old videos talking about things that people were predicting. From the pre-internet era of the multimedia revolution, that sort of era.

One prediction that was always laughable was voice control. Using an input method that is more exhaustive (and typically slower) than simply moving your fingers about which itself ignores several major problems; language, dialect, accent, speed, cadence, volume, security, and more.

Virtual Reality is another. While it is sort of a thing, it's nowhere close to the complete immersion and saturation that they often posited; because wearing even a slightly bulky hat prove too much for most people; that and predicting it'd be so by 2003 was worthy of a sensible chuckle.

Edit:
You are allowed to discuss other failed paradigm shifts, just you know, keep it somewhat dated.

Gestural input. Ugh. B&W would have been so much better just with standard inputs.

And I loathe "smart"phones that force their gestural inputs for various things. Way to ask for so much more physical and mental effort from the user, as well as hiding away your features undiscoverably.

Voice control worked on the C64 already, and VR is pretty immersive - if correctly done.

Now, is voice control something, I would want to play my games with..?
Probably not.

But a lot of disabled people use it on a daily basis, so...

VR is dependent on many parameters: affordability, ease of use, what gets made available for it?, can the person using it, stomach it?, is one interested in using it at all?, etc.

And again: in non-gaming environments (architecture, engineering, etc) it's used on a daily basis, already.

I remember using the PS2 headset in the SOCOM games and the game Lifeline, and being reasonably impressed. But I can't remember any other game putting it to use really.

I've heard about a disabled person, a full-time wheelchair user, who found virtual reality to be very liberating, and enjoyed it very much.

There is definitely accessibility discussions to be had over VR, but with situations like this, VR does have a place, and it is important for those discussions to be had.

On the other hand, remember the Virtual Boy? (It's the one Nintendo console that could be said to have flopped.)

(Worth noting, however, that VR really isn't my thing. I'm not interested in playing or making VR software or games.)

Those hats are a lot more than "slightly bulky," and they are also far from the only problem with VR.

VR is also never going to take off until if & when they fix the problem of making games with instantly & always immersion-breaking disembodied hands that float all around the sky, which makes the games unplayable.

I don't care at all what the excuses they give for that crap are; if they don't know how to make a game without disembodied floating hands, then they shouldn't make the game, period.

Your birth! ( I joke my friend)

I would have to go with Motion Controls/Gestural Inputs, more annoying and silly then anything

"We have seen the future, and it does not work." ~ Quote from Zardoz(1974), which has proven to be chillingly prophetic.

I remember playing Goldeneye on the Wii with the zapper that came with Link's Crossbow Training. The motion controls were pretty fun. I stomped a lot noobs, too. Wish there were something like it for PC or Switch.

Do you know of the ... I'm not sure how exactly to describe it... Virtual Hub (?) Second Life?
Turns out that ''reality'' had a real appeal to disabled people.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/17/02/18/0043237/thousands-of-disabled-people-are-living-in-virtual-utopias-in-second-life
Virtual world provides a real-life haven for the disabled (latimes article)

not really on topic I honest to god want a wristphone, Star Trek style. I know there are smartwatches but those do not offer ability to phone.

And of course Seaman/Hey You Pikachu were both pet sims with a microphone, which later would be lazily replicated into the Nintendogs series.

hmmm my experience was up and down with the wii, the only good game with good motion controls imo was the metroid prime trilogy.

Or when they realize I play video games to relax and don't want to be up and flailing around and stuff. Wii was a great example of "all these games suck and would have been better if it was just a button press to do that instead of motion controls". VR multiplies that by a lot.

Yeah, I always turn all that gesture nonsense back to the 3 buttons on Android phones. Hopefully they won't remove it for a long while.