Cardboard was what got me interested in the whole area so it had it's value. But I think for about 90% of people it had negative value because it presented such a poor experience to the general user. To this day I ask people if they'd like to try my VR headset and they will say "no I tried that already, I know what it's like". Most of the time they mean cardboard and it bears almost no resemblance to the modern day experience. But 10 years later the impression still sticks.
I got my wife of all people to try a demo app on the MQ3 where cracks appear in your walls and your room gets invaded by aliens and you have to shoot them with the bop gun. She liked it.
But no way am I going to get her to sit through a cat simulator or Asgard's Wrath 2. She didn't like Beat Saber at all.
I hear you, but I wouldn't put the blame on Cardboard.
The reason these people haven't tried anything else since Cardboard is because VR is still clumsy, expensive, of limited use and/or vomit inducing. I say that as my headset is still in active use after 5 years of owning it. In many respects I think nothing better than Cardboard has yet came out at this point for the ultra casual user.
Otherwise people were willing to give the Vision Pro a try because it was launched with much fanfare with a huge press focus, and I'd expect the Meta glasses to also have interest from people getting to try it.
These kind of big mainstream targeted events need to happen more often and stick in the news for people's perception of XR to move on.
The problem is not that there's not good experiences now, it's that the lingering bad aftertaste of the bad tracking and overly rough experiences (eg rollercoaster) causes. Nausea is a powerful influence and can really contaminate an experience and cause a really negative lingering association. This is also why we advise people to stop immediately when they feel it to get their VR legs. If they go too long the barrier to put the headset back on is too great.
But these days VR tracking is pretty great so it only happens to people who are seriously sensitive now. Especially when teleport motion is used.
