Which headset was first?
No single product can be named the first VR gaming headset without qualification. Experimental systems from universities and research firms were used to play simple games in the 1980s, but they were not sold to players. The first commercial gaming systems that the public could actually use came in the early 1990s, mainly in arcades. Home products followed with mixed results, and a few much-discussed devices were announced but never released.
Arcades first
The Virtuality machines, developed by a British company led by Jonathan Waldern and introduced around 1991, are usually cited as the first widely deployed VR games. Players wore a headset and held a controller in a pod, playing games such as a shooting game or a flight-style game, and some machines could be linked so players competed. The graphics were basic, flat-shaded 3D shapes, and the headset had low resolution. Sessions were short and cost money each time. The machines appeared in arcades and venues in several countries, but the business faded after the mid-1990s.
Arcade companies in the period also sold pods with large screens rather than headsets, and this blurs claims about firsts, since a seated cockpit with a projected display is also “virtual reality” in some descriptions. Here the term is used for head-mounted systems.
Home attempts
Several home products appeared in the 1990s.
- Sega announced a VR headset for the Genesis console in the early 1990s and showed it publicly. It was not released for sale, and reports at the time cited concerns about the product’s quality and possible discomfort for players. Companies seldom give detailed reasons for canceled products, so any single explanation is uncertain.
- Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, released in 1995, was a tabletop device that you looked into, not a headset worn on the head. It used red LED displays to produce a stereoscopic effect, limiting the picture to red and black. Sales were weak, and it was withdrawn within about a year. Nintendo later returned to 3D displays on handheld devices without headsets.
- Personal-computer headsets from various small companies, including the Forte VFX1 around 1995, were sold at high prices to enthusiasts. Support from game developers was limited.
Why the first wave failed
Reasons usually offered include the following:
- Low resolution and limited field of view made scenes look crude.
- Delay between head motion and display update caused discomfort for some users.
- Equipment was expensive compared with the games it played.
- There were few good games; developers had little reason to invest in a tiny audience.
- Publicity had promised something close to a fully realistic world.
No single factor explains it, and each reinforced the others. A cheap, comfortable device with a strong game library might have survived despite its flaws, but none of the products of the time offered all of these.
The long gap
For most of the next fifteen years, VR appeared mainly in research and specialist work. Meanwhile, graphics cards for personal computers improved sharply, and games became a very large industry, building much of the technology VR would later reuse. Smartphones then provided the small, sharp screens and motion sensors that earlier headsets lacked.
The revival
A crowdfunding campaign in 2012 for a developer headset from Oculus drew large support and attention from game developers. Facebook announced its acquisition of the company in 2014. Consumer launches followed in 2016: the Oculus Rift in March, the HTC Vive with Valve’s software support in April and Sony’s PlayStation VR in October for the PlayStation 4. Games designed for the format, including rhythm games, puzzle games and shooters with motion controllers, found audiences, and several became commercial successes within the platform.
What actually sold
Early consumer headsets sold in far smaller numbers than mainstream consoles. Standalone devices that needed no computer, starting with a headset released in 2019, widened the audience by lowering the barrier to entry. Even so, VR remains a smaller part of the games market than traditional consoles, PCs and mobile games. Predictions made during the 2016 launch period that VR would soon rival them did not come true.
Reading the record carefully
For the 1990s the practical conclusion is that the technology reached the public too early. For the 2010s it matured, though growth has been moderate and the long-term size of the market is uncertain. The gap between announced products and shipped ones is a good reminder to check claims of “first” against what a person could actually buy.