I think it's just sort of a natural pushback to the hyperbole that comes from the other side - that it's going to be a massive overwhelming success and that every family will have 9 of them in their living room by May this year.
In reality, it's not going to be a gigantic failure, nor a massive mainstream success. It will still sell well, the manufacturers will continue iterating and improving.
This is fine. VR is awesome.
Yeah it's definitely a bit of that. Anyone who is expecting this to be an immediate mainstream success needs to have their expectations drastically tempered, and those thinking this is going to be a complete failure are going to be in for a long drawn out period of disbelief.
All three of the big players know that this medium is going to take some time to grow into mainstream acceptance. It probably won't be in this or even next generation's hardware iteration, but down the road, when VR evolves more, it will start to show more and more people that this is another visual/audio output medium like TV's, theaters, radio, headphones. books, or smartphones, and not things like Wii-motes or kinects.
I also think the biggest problem some people are having with their thinking of this is just associating this with gaming and comparing it to what we're used to in games. And this thinking rightfully so as that's the current big push to own VR right now. But as the medium grows it will gradually branch out more then just games and start to become just that: another medium we use for stuff.
Lastly there are people's expectations of the tech. Some people's expectations are just unrealistically too high, and some people's expectations are still stuck in the 90s. Right now we're finally at a point where this tech works at an acceptable level. The 3D, the FOV, the head tracking, the positional tracking, the processing power are finally all harmoniously working together to help trick the viewer's brain. Is it perfect? Of course not, but now that all the pieces are in place it's just a matter of time for the tech to improve. Once that happens then people with higher expectations will start jumping on board as well.