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2016 is supposed to be VR’s year

Big names are betting on virtual reality to be The Next Big Thing.

Virtual reality has been a dream for decades — a dream wrecked by failures. The last time VR fantasies reached fever pitch was in the 1990s, which culminated in the debut of the Nintendo Virtual Boy. The technology just wasn’t ready, and the Virtual Boy was discontinued a year after its launch.

Consumer VR went dark for a while, but hope never really went away. 2016’s virtual reality resurgence can be traced back to one fundraiser in 2012, when Oculus VR launched a Kickstarter campaign to build development kits of its Rift, a VR headset for immersive gaming.

The campaign ignited, and it raised US$2.4 million, almost 1,000% of its original US$250,000 target. Two years later, Facebook bought Oculus VR for US$2 billion, near 1,000% of its Kickstarter funding. The big purchase cemented the surge to make VR a thing.

But why is Facebook, a social networking service, getting into VR? Why are Apple, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft and Samsung, for that matter?

The simplest answer is the desire to conquer and command the next platform in consumer technology. If there’s anything the last 40 years of personal computers has taught us, it’s that there is great power and profit when you’re the dominant platform.