Bit of a long post, sorry. tl;dr: less negative take on E3 and more so the future of VR than OP and some posters.
Thread might have been well-intentioned, but hardly surprising to see it being used as a stick to beat VR with once again by a certain segment who will lilkely never accept or be convinced by the medium. Oh well! People clearly saw what they wanted to see at E3 in terms of VR. Anyone with more than a passing interest and watched more than a handful of pressers got to see masses of new VR content on the horizon.
Bethesda -- Ports and adaptations of older games, yes. But damn those are big games and given the install base for VR I'm very happy to see these. They're taking what they have/know and working back from there to re-engineer these titles, so the investment required is minimal in the grand scheme. OK, some will jeer and moan, but the reality is it could easily allow the next instalments of these and similar titles to come VR-ready out of the box. So that's big news IMO.
Ubisoft -- Transference looks interesting stuff, it's good they're demonstrating a desire to explore the further reaches of what VR can bring, not limited to just straight-up games. Can see why the appeal might not be there for anyone who isn't already invested in VR though. UBI have done more than most with simple stuff like Rabbids on daydream, a personal favourite Eagle Flight showing thrilling fast movement doesn't have to cause nausea on to Star Trek and Wolves multiplayer titles that Space Junkies will add to - they're not scaling back IMO, they're fully on board with VR, especially interested in VR as a multiplayer experience. Hope it continues when Vivendi swallows them up.
Sony -- Thought that, as with your post on the whole OP, this was a bit of a negative take. They showed a lot of weighty titles in the presser, really good stuff in the pre-show and there was more in the following week to fill in the details and add to what we know about other titles. Loud Ninja's list speaks volumes regarding what we've seen over the past weeks - I imagine most people in this thread speaking negatively didn't witness even half of those and wouldn't go out of their way to research them now as it'd interfere with their comfortable current opinion. Also, anyone never having experienced true VR would have difficulty seeing those clips and realising just how good some of them look to be.*asciishrug*
Microsoft -- OK, I'm not convinced anything is going to happen on this front until the next console generation, it hardly seems worth exploring a niche area of gaming on a console that is likely to remain low on install base as a small subset of the overall xb1 install. I think that's why we saw the Oculus exclusive title reworked for regular TV play, it was likely a done deal that needed to be reworked as they backed down from VR/AR plans (just my take, no evidence whatsoever). They should continue their engineering efforts in mixed reality, but have to focus on 1st party traditional games going forward 'cause the fans aren't going to accept seeing masses of effort thrown into AR/VR when 1st party isn't where it needs to be.
PS.VR is obviously the biggest seller so far, but all these companies are effectively working together to bring on the medium, they're not fierce rivals in the traditional sense during this phase. Sony are in the best position to break VR currently as consoles are an accepted livingroom device, but their offering is way too complex cabling-wise and in terms of setting up acceptable tracking, and has suffered with production/supply issues leading to not beening able to be marketed accordingly - or we could say it's managed to reach a potential audience without much in the way of required marketing effort, and we're told that's about to change. Have to wait and see how that works out, but in these early years I'm sure they're happy ticking over like this and learning what works and what doesn't. PS.VR is not a device they expect to go mainstream.
That we're little over half a year in on console side and we have the likes of Farpoint showing where peripherals like Aim can heighten the experience immeasurably (the game is fairly standard stuff without it, the experience with is next level stuff), RE7 showing a game doesn't have to be designed from the ground up to be VR-friendly and VR experiences don't have to limit themselves to 20 minute bursts, as with the upcoming Bethesda titles - not seeing much to worry about on that front. But I was never going to be a worrier, I bought in because I can afford to and because I want to experience the journey VR takes from as close to day #1 as it's possible (wish I could have been there for Oculus revisions then Vive). Some people have such a binary view though, I might game exclusively on it for a few days and for the rest of the month it sits there doing nothing, it's not like we're stuck with the HMDs on 24/7 and limited to only VR titles in isolation.
Some love to dismiss VR as a motion-control-like-fad or a 3D-like-fad, but the fact is it takes both those fads, multiplies their effectiveness together, negates many of their limitations and realises more of their true potential as it adds in its own magic: presence. You don't get to experience any of this by sticking your phone to your face, it's sad to see people write off the medium after doing so. Current hardware is far from perfect on any platform, but we're in the Atari 2600 era of VR (90s Vitruality and Virtual Boy didn't count). In a few years we'll be taking leaps to the NES and SNES iterations when we drop the cables and employ techniques such as foveated rendering. When the PlayStation, Dreamcast and Xbox of VR come, maybe a decade from now, that's when VR will be accepted and adopted on a grander scale. But this will happen, VR isn't getting dropped as a fad as it's real potential is far from explored.
So yea, I understand people saying the tech isn't there and it's not ready for the mass consumer - in the console space especially. But damn that doesn't mean it's any less incredible and truly impressive for many of those invested right now, and without this phase none of what comes later is possible. So you guys sat on the fence and not being convinced, years from now you can thank us enthusiasts who are all in and throwing our money not at the TV, but randomly into the virtual space extending before us (seriously, I've spent a lot on VR software!).
Sony has shown us VR can be social. UBI is showing us VR is multiplayer-friendly and can crossplay between not only manufacturer platforms but also beyond gaming ecosystems. Bethesda and Capcom are proving that some traditional games can be adapted for more immersion and future games could come with it built in day 1. And away from the massive corporations, small dev teams are doing exciting and amazing things by pioneering advances in gaming and storytelling. To shrug that off seems... blinkered.
So E3 wasn't ever going to be a time or place to convince non-believers, but what it offered was more than many realised and with VR being notoriously difficult to convey, maybe the annual press conf megashows wasn't really where we should have looked for it. That might change years from now as technologies and VR development evolves, maybe strapping a phone to the face will allow people to demo a little of the look and feel of VR titles more directly.
E3 has much to offer, VR is a tiny subset of it and needed some legwork to uncover, but as a whole, what VR has in store now vs what we knew a month ago can objectively be seen positively.
