VR is going to be like VHS vs Betamax all over again

Not to be a pedant, but I think it's important to recognize that porn wasn't really the factor people think it is in that format war. There absolutely was porn distributed on Beta. The problems for beta were almost immediate, before pre-recorded media even existed on either platform. I think these same core issues will also be present for the war of the closed-garden VR platforms.

Even though beta came out first and had a very early lead, that pretty quickly changed. A huge part of the reason that it changed was because Sony insisted on manufacturing all betamax devices themselves. They did eventually allow a handful of trusted high end Japanese partner companies to also make betamax machines but these were all more expensive high-end machines than the one Sony produced. VHS was a pretty much open standard or as open as one could be at the time. Anyone could make a VHS player so very rapidly there were much cheaper machines on the market, so cheap in fact that in Europe, Philips lobbied the government to put tariffs on VHS and betamax machines to help prop up their Video2000 standard, which still failed because the VHS machines were so much cheaper to build and sell.

Another huge factor was that recording time was much longer on vhs, with long play VHS giving the ability to record a full American football game which was a huge want for the US market. Beta was always playing catch up when it came to recording time and always coming up short, which resulted in VHS having a higher initial market share in the US, which then led to that being the larger install base for video rentals and small productions to target, resulting in a snowball effect. Producers release content for the larger platform and the platform with more content continues to grow.

Whoever makes a device that is affordable and does something that people actually want is going to be the one who wins this format war. Of course, there's also the issue that the currently leading platform is just PC VR, an already pretty much open standard where you can use whatever device you want, and the headset doesn't need to have the computing power in it. The manufacturers wants a closed Garden where they can control everything on their own app store like they have with cell phones, but to some degree, they're also being painted into a corner where they kind of have to support the PC market. PC gamers are the only people actually purchasing VR headsets and absolutely do not want a standalone device that doesn't allow them to play their PC VR games.

I could be wrong, but I think releasing a $3,500 headset during an economic recession, and which is entirely incompatible with all existing hardware and software is not going to result in apple cornering the VR market like they want this thing to do. It's chasing after an ultra-high-end, non-enthusiast market which does not currently exist and is a notoriously unprofitable market for anything to target. It's fighting against the low end standalone market and the high end PC VR market, and it seems on paper to be losing on both price and features to the PC market, and who's going to spend two month's rent on a toy for little Timmy which will also need thousands of dollars in software?

I think this is going to be incredibly niche, and the only thing that's going to keep it from being a high profile flop is that they aren't Google and don't cancel projects the second they get bored of them or realise they're a hopeless money pit. I see this exact hardware being on the market for about 5 years with the only updates being the relatively modular processor, and the app store being mostly ports and a handful of exclusives thst apple will pay through the teeth for, only to have a sequel release on a different platform.