Seperate comment because it's a separate topic: if I was looking to make money from VR as a primary consideration (as opposed to my current cascade of story first, money second) I'd be ignoring games altogether and looking at creativity / design / conferencing apps, probably for enterprise.
VR is incredible for creation and design, and can easily be collaborative too.
I think I'd focus on the education/simulation training and medical market; there's already a bit in there, but nothing crazy big that I am aware of. Think:
Welding/training simulators (or tool training period)
Job training (perhaps heavy equipment simulation?)
Psychological/medical treatment (for instance, treating fear of heights - which has already been experimented with)
Virtual Design (VR CAD/CAM, interior decorating, real estate, etc)
I'm sure there are ton of these kinds of apps just waiting to be built or expanded on. Some of these could even enter into the home or consumer use areas.
Yes, training is another area where there's clearly a lot of potential to address pain points and make a great deal of money.
I was discussing VR with an ex-military colleague recently, and he got quite excited about the potential of the technology to enhance and extend early-stage simulator training. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy a Vive than a tank simulator.
And the therapy applications are incredibly exciting. Early days for those still research-wise, though.
"OK, how many times do you send your designers away to have a meeting with their colleagues in other offices? And how much do the flights and hotel cost?
Well, you could eliminate 9/10 of those flights, hotel, travel time costs, and the rest by buying this one headset and upgrading their PCs - oh, and buying my proprietory design app..."
By the looks of it, Autodesk have had much the same thought.
I don't want to share anything that goes on my face with anyone in the office I work with. Just passing one around the conference room to each of the execs during your pitch should make that obvious pretty quickly.
I don't see VR as a useful replacement for video conferencing. You don't get any more body language and arguably less facial cues than standard video conferencing. If an engineer is getting sent somewhere, it's typically because they need to physically interact with something, which you also don't get with VR. For designers, I suspect the low resolution and inability to import and (especially) edit whatever designs they're looking at would prevent VR from being useful also.
VR is incredible for creation and design, and can easily be collaborative too.