CCP boss says not to expect virtual reality boom in 2016

It will take longer than some people think for VR to hit the big time, the CEO of CCP has said.

While excited by the technology, Venture Beat reports that Hilmar Veigar Ptursson told the SlushPlay conference in Reykjavik that disruptive technologies always take longer to bed in than most people anticipate.

People tend to overestimate what we will accomplish in five years. But they tend to underestimate where we’ll be in 10 years,” he said. 3D [graphics] cards took six years to catch on, and phones took 10 years. I used to go to GDC and they would say that mobile phones are the future, and it was nothing. Ringtones were a bigger business than games back then.

And we sit here and say VR is going to be big next year. And it’s not going to be big.”

He furthered his argument by pointing out that while iPhone debuted in 2007 it took many years before games achieved any big money success. It wasn’t until the arrival of Angry Birds in 2009 that any real, believable market emerged, and it is only recent hits like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga made the $1bn mobile game target real.

Valve’s HTC-made VR headset is apparently on track to release in late 2015, while Sony’s Project Morpheus is currently targeting a 2016 release. Oculus Rift remains without a launch window, but 2015 has already been suggested to be unlikely.