There was a couple of spin off megaman game series’ that asked this question. The Battle Network series and the Starforce series.

They both essentially imagined a world where the internet of things was normal. The battle network series leaned into the “internet of things” concept where there was a virtual world that people navigated with their avatar counterparts. The “virtual world” in that one was a place that could be traveled by those avatars, although not actually VR.

There was quite a lot of world building to answer the question of “what’s it for” in battle network. The answer, in general, was automation of basically everything. That very same automation was typically exploited by the bad actors of the series to create the various crises in the stories.

The Starforce series actually featured an augmented reality over the world. This one was a little less expensive as far as the world building went, but the general idea was being able to use VR as a social tool.