This was three years ago and then it almost seemed that everyone would soon be walking around with VR glasses powered by their phones on the streets. It did not turn out this way. In fact, within three years most of us have successfully forgotten about mobile VR. It is completely and utterly dead.









First, though, let's make one important distinction: virtual reality itself is a concept that has its merits, especially when paired with serious developers that provide experiences that are immersive, engaging and visually impressive. Those are things that come together in devices like the HTC Vive or PlayStation VR, which people actually enjoy and use in real life. VR gaming is still a niche, but one that is quite interesting. Contrast this to VR powered by your phone in gadgets like the Samsung Gear VR, which is... quite dead. There is no good-quality content and users have collectively turned their back and successfully forgotten about that.









So why did mobile VR fail in the first place? It seemed to have everything: Samsung was giving away Gear VRs for free by the thousands, but even if you did not get a free one, you could purchase the glasses at a very affordable price. Facebook was on board, Google was on board and many other big names as well. The two missing ingredients: powerful enough hardware and quality game developers.





It's all about mobile games





Here is the thing: like it or not games are the most profitable class of applications out there. It is what's driving both the majority of users to app stores and subsequently what drives developers. Mobile VR never had any great games. There were many titles, but none the scale of say Fortnite or Pokemon Go, or anything that would truly make users wear those dorky glasses every single day. The reason for that might have been the weak software or quite simply, that the quality developers were all focused on getting the real VR games right for the true gaming platforms like the aforementioned Playstation VR.

How did tech giants like Samsung, Google and Facebook get mobile VR so wrong and how can they learn from this mistake?