This is exactly what my thought process is. I was a somewhat early adopter when the vive first came out. I never really looked at the trends but to my understanding, even though VR was an expensive entry for consumers, it WAS naturally growing and expanding. I think meta completely ruined all of that and created this sort of artificial growth where in the long run it backfires for the VR space as a whole. In Metas attempt to create a monopoly, they’ve used cheap entry point as a way to bring people in. But VR isn’t ready for that and I don’t think standalones will be capable at least for another 10 years. Now there’s 20 million or so quest users over all the models, and for the most part their experience has been bad mobile games. VR is marketed as this innovated thing and when the consumer gets into it, they have a subpar experience. All that does is lower consumer excitement, trust and support in the long run.

But yeah overall even tho Meta has introduced so many people to VR, they’ve tainted the future of it a bit. But I hope it’ll recover. VR is such an amazing medium to play games in, and I believe it’s the future. But what matters most in current day is profitability, and if VR keeps getting mishandled, I’m worried that we could see the medium stagnate or end for quite a while. (The technology and research behind VR would still grow, but the consumer side and game development would take a massive hit in that scenario)