I hope it isn't dying. The basic tech is no longer out of reach, and closed ecosystems aren't make or break, but there are other issues.
1) marketing vr for games and productivity is a waste. in those roles its just a novelty, and the limitations irritate enough to make use short-lived.
the focus should be on social and media. it's a bigger market and the value proposition is more obvious. there's a few video players, but other than vrchat i can't think of anyone pushing the boundaries on social use.
2) the desired hardware isn't really here yet, and too few want to invest in that eventual payoff
Most of the headsets have the same old strap mechanism, lens limitations, and almost no integration of body tracking past your hands and head.
Tue quest pro is expensive, but its form factor and tracking integration is novel and convenient. I hope to see more such innovation.
3) tracking and movement convenience and time-to-content needs improvement
Carmack has said it all before. You can't get VR to the masses if it requires too much voodoo to operate. A quest 2 isnt hard to use, but it isn't the desired hardware either. Full body tracking is currently limited to just nerds because they're the only ones who will put up with the requirements and limitations, yet, you need that for good social interaction. Hand tracking needs to be better. You need to be able to walk around freely. And omni-directional treadmills will never get adoption if they even ever get properly made.
Tech is way out of reach for regular consumers. It’s clunky. UX for games and applications is difficult to use.
The locked in ecosystems with various devices doesn’t help as well (Apple vs Facebook/Occulus).