While it was certainly interesting to see Razer come out with a new attack on the virtual reality (VR) market, it really, in the end, only served to raise questions about the state of the industry as a whole. The growing number of firms looking to get involved was unusual enough, but where was Oculus VR, the firm that kicked the whole thing off, really? The answer? It was at the recently-concluded Consumer Electronics Show, and in a very big way.

The reports suggested that not only did Oculus have a serious new booth at the CES event—backed up by, in all likelihood, the recent $2 billion acquisition of the firm by Facebook—but it also had a new demo known as “Crescent Bay.” Available reports suggest that this has really stepped up its game in the space since the last release, and that's going to give the company a lot of edge.

But there's still one point that isn't just affecting Oculus, but most every other VR system in the pipeline: release dates. We've had some amazing technical demonstrations so far, we've had some incredible early looks, but no one's talking about releases, and that's going to do some damage in the long run. When people are kept waiting too long, even amazing technical demonstrations don't help much. After all, when people stop caring about a release, there's not much that can re-fire that passion.

However, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Oculus's own co-founder, Nate Mitchell, noted that there was indeed a chance a consumer version would ship in 2015, but it was going to be late in the year, and there was still plenty of ground to cover before that release could hit. That could be good news, especially given the number of large-scale open world games set to hit in 2015.

At the end of the day, though, it's all about the users. Right now, patience is starting to wear thin; they've been hearing about this platform for the last couple of years now, and not having much in the way of access to it is grating. Much in the way people are running out of patience for the release of Half Life 3, or even for Fallout 4, so too will the users only stand by for so much longer before the whole experience is abandoned as a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream that never panned out. But if the consumer models can hit in time for holiday shopping 2015, that could be the move that really kicks off the industry in a big way.