Weeks before the commercial release of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey is sounding some cautious notes, as in this interview with Gamasutra, saying, "Don't believe the most optimistic things the analysts say. Especially when those analysts don't actually know anything about VR." This might surprise some VR enthusiasts, but it's actually consistent with what Palmer was telling me last year, when I started interviewing him for my recent Wired article:

“It’s extremely unlikely it’s going to come anywhere close to modern game consoles,” he told me last Summer, when I asked him if he thought VR's growth would track that of next gen consoles like the PS4 or Xbox 360. Both are platforms put out from longtime companies, he pointed out, launching with lots of game IP -- neither of which is true just yet with the leading VR platforms. “[In the] early days, very unlikely [VR] will sell anywhere near the 360." (The Xbox 360 is approaching around 100 million units sold after being on the market for about five years.)

Back in 2014, analyst firm KZero predicted there would be 83M VR headset owners by 2018, a number I also brought up with Luckey -- but he wasn't even willing to go that high:

"No official forecast, but I will say 80 million is not going to happen” in that time frame, he told me. Interestingly, he contrasted VR with non-game electronics products that we consider mass market now, noting how long they actually took to gain a large install base: