> Valve actually tried with the first Half-Life game in a decade, and even that didn't work.

Half Life Alyx is still considered to be one of the best VR games ever made and one that is still consistently recommended to new users even years after release. IMO people buy hardware because of the exclusive content. If a standard game console came out and it only had one AAA game on it, I probably wouldn't bother buying it. But if there were 3-4 games that looked really interesting it starts to look more worth the investment. Playing VR games takes a lot of committment (time / physical space / $$$) so the payoff has to be worth it or you'll lose people. With the huge amount of money spent on R&D for new hardware I think it's a valid argument to say that maybe funding content would have been a better investment in terms of ensuring platform growth.

Also, side note but not every game requires free motion. Plenty of hits had no movement or teleport etc. A lot of these were completely new (sub-)genres that didn't exist or hit the same as they would in a traditional pancake game. Plus lots of kids seem unaffected by free movement (maybe as high as 50% of users by my rough estimate).