Link: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/neal_stephenson_death_of_metaverse/

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has argued he and others who believed immersive environments would require head-mounted hardware got it wrong.

In a post penned to mark Meta’s recent decision to end its work on the Metaverse after blowing through $80 billion, Stephenson said that twenty years ago, when he worked at virtual reality hardware company Magic Leap, he would ask “Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands?”

“At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,” he wrote. Now he thinks that another 20 years into the future, devices like smartphones will still dominate. “Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces.”

the tech isn't any good yet, but I believe smart glasses could be a good candidate.

Stephenson uses Substack? I really would have imagined him using something more bespoke or Ghost.

VR still lives for gaming! Steam VR offers some great experiences, with mods taking that further, and the upcoming Steam Frame headset (if AI doesn’t steal every component in existence). Don’t expect growth for daily digital tasks (Apple VR and the like tried and failed), but the niche has been carved out for gamers!

Went from believing “yes” is inevitable to believing “no” is inevitable instead of learning the lesson that most of this is just random

I never understood the hype of VR goggles beyond things like VR Chat combined with body trackers. Fun to watch people make an ass of themselves in VR games, but that only lasts so long before it gets boring.

That's my take, at least.

These devices were never gonna gain mass appeal, it's simply too expensive to develop for in exchange for a significantly smaller userbase

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse”
Metaverse inventor

That's not what inventing means. That's like saying George Lucas "invented" hyperspace.

This isn't even the actual article headline, it's "Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’". OP?

I got bad news

I got Virtual Home Theater on Steam to watch 3D movies, it' s a great experience.

Half-Life: Alyx and the Psychonauts VR game are also great.
Pro Tip: The HP Reverb G2 is really cheap and it's got 2160p per eye. It's not officially supported anymore since Microsoft canceled their VR platform, but Oasis drivers make them work better than ever.

I run the hed connected with the link when posting.

I really enjoyed Beat Saber for a while. It seemed like the only game that really made VR worth it as a hard requirement, though. Pavlov was fun for a while, too, but my knees definitely suffered.

Make them cheaper and higher resolution than large curved monitors, and reasonably light and untethered, and you might get a surprise.

I don't think VR need to be the "next big thing" but it is just a fun little thing. I have an old HTC Vive and I love firing up beat saber and taking turns with folks when I have company over.

Also vr chat is great!

It seem like people are obsessed with making vr better amd more widespread. I'm content with it to just be a fun little thing I break out every once in a while

Can’t go wrong with an affordable headset with solid resolution :) and agreed, Alyx was an absolute banger!

Might have to try that home theater offering 🎭

Lots of multiplayer VR FPS’s too, pretty fun! Forefront’s been my Battlefield fix, way more fun than BF6 wound up being at a lower price, and I do love VR tank-time lol

TBH though, the best VR experiences I’ve had have been survival crafting games :) loads of fun and super immersive, especially as you build up your base and get to actually be inside of it, then run out for some fighting and looting lol but it really shines in multiplayer, and for whatever godforsaken reason all the devs that do wind up making survival crafting VR games leave ‘em as single-player :/ at the moment best multiplayer survival crafting games for VR are mods for Valheim and 7 Days To Die - wish we could get some similar experiences that are actually built for VR! Feels like that’s been a drought since The Forest did their VR mode

https://mrtv.co/2025/03/meganex-superlight-8k-review-the-new-king-of-clarity-comfort/

A bit pricy, with too many limitations (for me it must support open source which means mostly AMD), but definitely a step in the right direction.

I don't think the issue is the goggles as much as, people multi task so much.

They watch TV while on laptops whike eating and checking their phones and being with friends of family.

Even with some magic virtual version of this, its still too disconnecting. Plus, if you are, I don't know, joint watching a movie in VR, no one wants to pull out their VR phone to heck an actors name on IMDB, or stop their VR Fortnite matchto take a bite of their sandwhich which they just plow into their headset.

That size makes me think it also likely has a battery life of seconds.

Vr would be fine if any complex games arose, and the ones that existed weren't murdered to make trend chasing pvpve slop

If I remember correctly it is cable bound either to a PC or a battery pack.

Yeah, it definitely won't survive an 8 hour day.

PC VR is amazing, but still the number of worthwhile full feature games is still small. Meta is just claiming VR is dead because their product sucks: their game library is shit, the metaverse was a joke, and their headsets are privacy nightmares. "Nobody wants what we're selling, so obviously it's the tech's fault."

I love VR and still gave away my quest 4 and deleted my account. I'm happily waiting for the Steam Frame to come out.

It's funny because literally in Snow Crash there are guys who wear giant head-mounted camera/ antenna/ hacking rigs, that the MC says are weirdos for doing it. The Metaverse in Snow Crash is a 'full dive' thing you basically plug into like the Matrix, not a headset. How they went and reversed those roles, and tried to market tiny screens strapped to your head as a Metaverse, is beyond me.

The absolute hubristic ignorance of tech bros, man...

The general rule on this instance is to use the link headline, to avoid people editorializing them. A lot of times sites will have a different in-article headline (or even change it post-publication).

I noticed this year that none of the VR games were on sale on steam during the Spring sale, like they were just ignored entirely.

I do think VR is back to dead for a while. Hit sweaty goggles that make a third of people sick just aint it.

Yeah I figure it was something like that.

Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands? At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,”

So this guy made the same prediction once already and was completely wrong

"When someone’s wearing a head-mounted display, on the other hand, you don’t know whether they are looking at you or not,” he wrote. “Likewise, when someone holds up their phone and aims it at you, it’s obvious that you are on camera. That’s not true in the case of glasses or goggles. So it’s creepy.”

Never heard of sunglasses? Creeps have been using them to covertly ogle strangers in public for generations now, and yet the majority of people own and use them.

This guy is a fucking moron.