If the Virtual Boy had never been created I wonder if we'd be moving more in that direction now.
Nintendo's failure with it would certainly cause any console maker, not just Nintendo, to have difficulties with marketing such a device. Maybe less so in the PC market, but even so I wonder how many people are hesitant to try any headset because of what they hear about the Virtual Boy whether or not they've actually used one. Even if a new headset was leaps and bounds above the Virtual Boy it's still not an easy thing to sell. And again, the headset creates more isolation to lonely gamer nerds (the stereotypical kind, anyway) and probably freak out non-gamers, 'cause they probably can't look down at whatever control device they're using to see what buttons to press.
I'm pretty sure Sega had a Sega VR thing that never came out. Yet I'm sure I saw it on the back of a cereal box. Technically a product that never came out should be a bigger failure than a product that has been released. I guess if a product hasn't been released much fewer people will know about it or remember it... >_<
Whether the Sega VR would've come before or after the Virtual Boy I don't quite remember. Was it pulled because it wasn't very good but there was no point to even release it because the VB was clearly not selling too well? Or was it better (it probably had more colours) but prohibitively expensive? Or am I just remembering wrong and it was just another Genesis add-on that everyone has been paid big money to disavow?