That headset poisoned the well of VR (as most Facebook/Oculus things did), by making people think VR was accessible and enjoyable untethered--not just wireless, but no PC.

Untethered is accessible, it's not long term enjoyable. Tethered VR is the opposite. It's long term enjoyable but not accessible. A major problem continues to be the amount of available content, as the comfort problem is rapidly improving with the Index and newer HTC headsets.

I would compare it to owning an early EV. They were expensive, not great, and not feasible for longer trips because charging wasn't there. Nobody wanted to build chargers or faster charging because people didn't want to buy EVs that couldn't go anywhere and took forever to charge, and because people didn't want to buy them they weren't building chargers or making improvements to charging/batteries. It's the same story with VR and VR Content.

It's not that VR isn't reaching the realm of being great the same way EVs were years back--it's that people don't want to buy them because there isn't enough to do on them. There has to be a threshold soon where either untethered VR actually gets great--which I doubt happens in the next 5 or maybe even 10 years--or wireless, PC VR is cheap and accessible enough that people are willing to get a PC to go with it.

That type of advance is what eventually got EVs the infrastructure they needed. The hardware has to advance before the content, but it's good enough now to not be a gimmick. Good enough to be a smart purchase for gamers is another question, unless you're into Sim.