Doing a lot of development on the side with the Oculus Rift, I think you will see the next gaming shift to VR. We will need a slightly lighter weight headset and battery operated, but what I've developed just on the side in short time frame is amazing, considering I have no game programming experience, but I am a programmer. To have 180 FOV essentially, but with headtracking, so it's essentially 360FOV.
I was considering setting up a simulation room with 3 projectors and edge blending to get 180FOV for simulation games (flying/racing). I may still do that, but after doing a little gaming on VR, I feel it's not necessary.
I would like 4K res in the headset too, and then you're really set. 1080p doesn't look horrible that close, but it can be improved.
When you have the idea that the user can physically look to the left with head tracking (vs. using analog sticks/etc), but still move forward, the reality becomes encompassing. You can look down off a cliff (when coded correctly), into deep space, and get vertigo. With VR headsets you open up a few new controller concepts. You can raycast the eyepoint of where a player is looking, and take action. The raycast is a specific Vector3 (x, y, z) pair (start point your eyes, end point what you're looking at). So once it intersects with another object (or set of objects), you can do something. I use it to navigate my "select a player" screen, just by having the player look at the player they want to choose.
I integrated the LEAP into having controllerless hand movements as input, but it doesn't feel super accurate and is tiring on the muscles, even when implemented correctly. The Kinect is probably a better hand/finger tracking implementation, but it's too expensive to think a consumer would have both the kinect and a VR headset in their house. so I've resorted to implementing control with a PS4 controller, but still using VR for the camera viewpoint.
Nintendo is known for advancing controller evolution, which opens up new ways for playing games, which can equate to newer types of games. I would be very surprised if Nintendo's next console had VR, though.
The rift has a lot of accessories coming out soon, masks that simulate heat, wind, water, smells. Think of walking into a burning house and feeling heat on your face (or maybe even melting it, where you must go to ER). There is also an omnidirectional treadmill (that most gamers won't use of course), but you stand in place and turn any direction and walk/run/crouch/jump realistically.
The rudimentary game I'm working on now, the engine is almost complete - given a level idea, I can usually create it within 60 minutes or so. I have a few game ideas I'd like to implement, just to see how it feels. My next project is an angry birds VR clone from the perspective of the bird.
The biggest benefit is sit down gaming, I don't see most gamers fit enough to actually move around for more than 15 minutes.
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