Virtual Reality; A Phase, A Gimmick or The Future?

Hi guys,
Firstly apologies for not posting in quite a few weeks, had a bunch of stuff to take care of, but I'm back now! I wanted to kick-start new content here by talking about the hardware flavour of the year, Virtual Reality. Recently the price and release window for PlayStations very own Virtual Reality headset was revealed, weighing in during October of 2016 and setting you back £349 or $399. This now means that Sony has the cheapest VR headset in the mass market, with big competitors Vive and Oculus Rift costing notable more. It has been said that between the release of Sony's VR headset and the end of 2016 there will be 50 VR titles released. This is quite the launch line up, though it seems unclear whether many of these games could be considered AAA titles. So we have the basics of the VR scene at the moment, now I want to talk about what I think about the latest technology trend. I will say now that I have not used a VR headset yet, and I know many people who have used them, say you need to use one to full understand it. However here are my thoughts as one of the many people who are yet to get hands on with Virtual Reality.

One aspect of the headset that will be interesting is the games, although we have had a look at a decent number of the games that will be releasing alongside the headset, it is hard to say whether the release line up will have some big hitting games that you know you will be able to play a lot of. Or whether it will more be along the lines of quite a lot of games released that won't hold your attention for long. Also I have been wondering where VR games will stand in the PlayStation Plus monthly line up. Are we about to get even more games per month of a possibly lower quality? Maybe a separate service will be offered just for monthly VR games, only time will answer these questions, but I will be intrigued to know how

Virtual Reality is not the future of the gaming medium in my opinion, though on the flip side to that, I wouldn't describe it as a gimmick. Different members of the industry and player base will react to the release in different ways, I think PSVR could turn into a niche thing that a decent number of people have. Though I can not see it ever getting to the stage were big budget AAA games are being solely released on VR. For example I can't imagine Call of Duty, or maybe Assassin's Creed shifting even slightly towards VR. At the end of the day, I believe the typical gamer just wants to relax with a game, not have to keep on looking round and interacting a lot with the environment. I think the problem with Virtual Reality could be the launch, if there isn't a convincing line of launch titles(or within the first few months) then sales won't be as good as they could be, therefore more people will be less inclined to buy it, leading to fewer developers putting time into VR games. That being said it could be the opposite, where launch and Christmas sales do very well causing more developers to put time into creating VR games. Only time will tell, though I strongly believe that because of the fact that the headset can't stand on its own feet(as it needs a PS4 to play from) the launch will make or break Sony's latest venture. What do you think will happen when the Virtual Reality headset for the PlayStation 4 launches in October of 2016? Let me know in the comments section, or on Twitter.
Thanks for reading,
Ed