I had formulated a thought for my reply just from seeing the title here, before clicking to read the post, and my thought was exactly the same as the quoted bit here.
Nintendo has always been about playing together in the same room. That's their niche in the crowded gaming market. VR does close you off from others and I knew that'd be what his thought process was.
I think it's fine for nintendo to ignore VR and go in a different direction. Nintendo has always been an innovator especially when it comes to hardware, such as the wii and wii u using your body more or less as the controller, and who even knows what the NX will be or how it will be controlled or change what we think about console gaming. Nintendo has a lot of quirky and fun ideas which set them apart from Xbox and Sony. Some of their ideas are gimmicky sometimes but still, they are "unique" and they will set new trends, not follow other trends in the gaming market.
Truthfully, Nintendo already DID VR, about 20 years ago now, with the Virtual Boy... Maybe not in the way we think of VR now with true to life graphics etc, but it was still a headset, and closed off system. -- and a complete financial failure for Nintendo lol. I had one, and boy was that thing uncomfortable, and the black/red graphics hurt my eyes/head. No thank you lol. I did sell it for a lot of money though, it's become quite a little collector item now and pretty sought after by gamers
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There were other "Virtual Reality" systems in the 90s too. I had one that hooked up to... something... VHS I guess it would've had to have been at the time, or maybe it had a "console" of some kind, I can't recall... It was a headset, full 3D - of course more polygon/blocky than the 3D we know of now. There was a roller coaster "game" where you leaned your body left/right to control the coaster and the graphics were right in your face, wrapped around your head, 360 degree angles, much like the vive and rift systems today. It lacked good games though, and died out quickly.
So Virtual Reality, isn't all that new really - it's been improved a lot - and probably still has room to grow, such as the units becoming lighter weight, and more affordable as technology advances.
