Microsoft Dismisses 3D as a "Future Technology"

[manaman]

Plus, no glasses,

This is why I'm loving Nintendo right now. In case no-one ever guessed, wearing a pair of 3D glasses is sort of difficult when you already wear glasses to see.

Parallax barrier TVs are already out in sizes up to 72", and other TVs have proven to work in sizes above 30", with some forms in the pipes at much larger sizes. If you don't know what they are parallax barrier is what the 3DS uses, and has a sweet spot to view from. Autostereoscopy really just means 3D tech that doesn't use glasses, but for purposes of news reports and the like it usually means anything that is not parallax barrier. Mostly those TVs use a combination of Lenticular lenses and parallax barrier, or eye tracking tech to ease eye strain.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

They have a point, but they also dismissed Blu-Ray and HDMI. Look where we are now. Then again, they would come out with something radical and cool to top the other guys, which is probably their strategy at this point.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Plus, no glasses,

This is why I'm loving Nintendo right now. In case no-one ever guessed, wearing a pair of 3D glasses is sort of difficult when you already wear glasses to see.

Quoted for truth.
i went to see avatar in 3D ... most annoying part was putting on glasses on glasses.. especially since the 3D glasses are so bulky and stiff

That's why I can't enjoy 3D movies. It's not like I can take my real glasses off and still see something clearly that's more then a meter away.

 

[Jumplion]

Nothing confirmed, but it's supposedly backwards compatible, yes.

The DS XL (which is out, and gorgeous) is just a bigger DS. The 3DS is entirely new hardware.

It's not a revision of the DS like the DSi, Lite, or XL. It's a new platform, like the DS was to the GBA.

Hmm, I think another slight reason I'm skeptical is the naming of the 3DS. It's still being named a "DS", like "DS Lite", "DSi", "DS XL". Is the adding of a number pun really make it a new handheld? Usually when things have numbers after them (Playstation 1, 2, 3, Xbox, Xbox360) it implies an entirely new console, right? Adding "3D" at the end of a name makes it seem like an addon, not a full console. It'd be like naming the next iteration of Playstation "Playstation 3D", it just doesn't work (for me anyway).

Then again, I really have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about anymore. I'm just nervous about this is all, so we'll leave it at that.

 

[JJMUG]

Microsoft is all about ripping off the Wii from 4 years ago... ROFL!!!! 3D? That's magic and space men talk. The Microsoft games department needs to be shut down and rebooted.

What the i don't even........

 

[Woe Is You]

Nintendo's never done the whole numbering thing. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64. Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance.

And if you looked at the Kid Icarus trailer and look at the layout of the handheld or checked the specs, you'll notice that even without the touted 3D effect it obviously is a whole new platform. Regular DS and DSi games are far more primitive looking.

I'm more interested in backwards compatibility: if we will be getting that, will regular DS games be enhanced in some way?

 

[Space Jawa]

I would agree with Microsoft, if its wasn't for three little things: 3. D. S.

If 3D is a thing of the future, then the future is just over the horizon, and Nintendo is paving the road.

Considering how much the 3D movie craze it getting on my nerves, I think it really speaks to just how well the N at least appears to have this thing figured out. First, they got rid of the glasses. If they've found a way to do it without needing to charge a premium for everything, it's golden as far as I'm concerned.

 

[WilliamRLBaker]

Agreed with that...but then again Pseudo 3d does give me massive headaches...So Im physically incapable of watching it...lets hope 3ds actually fixes that...

 

[Meggiepants]

And losing money on the consoles until much later in the game didn't happen just because of the blu-ray inclusion. It's the way consoles typically work when they are first released [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6140383.html]. They make most of their money off of the licensing for the video games and the accessories, not off the consoles.

It's actually a pretty recent phenomenon. Till the last generation, this kind of model was sort of rare. I'm not saying it was unheard of but it surely wasn't the way "things typically worked".

And let's not pretend that the addition of a BD drive didn't add to the price of an already expensive device.

The article quoted is for both the Xbox, and the 360, since both lost more than $100 for every console made. So we're talking about 9 years of sales here.

I can't speak to money loss of the Nintendo or the Atari before that, it would take more research than I'm willing to do. But I would be surprised if they profited on the basic hardware at launch.

And you're quibbling over the detail of how much more Sony lost per unit when my point was that both systems were losing money.

I should be clear here, I'm no Sony fangirl. I own both systems and had a Wii until I gave up on it. I'm just giving credit where credit is due. And I would be willing to bet Sony considers this a win for themselves.

 

[Yeager942]

Is it just me, or does this 3D thing still seem like a gimmick. I'm still not convinced that 3D is the way to go.

 

[geldonyetich]

You can actually get a 3D monitor for a fairly affordable price. They cost about $300 on NewEgg. Granted, these monitors require you wear some passive polarized glasses, similar to movie theatres, unlike the $3000 TV screens they're talking about in the article. (These lenses should not be confused with the shutter glass technology that has been around for awhile, nor with Red/Blue glasses that you can use with standard monitors and NVIDIA's 3D Vision Discover [http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-discover-main.html] tech.)

Speaking from experience, once you've gone 3D it's hard to go back. Being able to see around the polygons you're staring at is really cool, it gives games are a true sense of space that really gives you a better feeling of what's going on in the game. Unfortunately, not a lot of games are properly compatible with 3D yet, they usually have their Z-Buffer drawn wrong somewhere, with certain things like HUD indicators drawn in 2D over the 3D screen, but maybe the introduction of the Nintendo 3DS will heighten developer attention.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I still play on a dusty standard TV for my Xbox 360, hardly a "home theater."

Let's get a HDTV and maybe some surround sound before I consider going 3D.

 

[Ravek]

Good luck being immersed with a headache.

I don't get headaches from watching 3D. You'll need to show that most people get headaches from watching 3D stuff before your argument is a convincing reason why 3D is bad.

And shit.

Sure. That's why it's not used anymore.

 

[OrdinaryGuy]

At least Microsoft has their head on straight. 3D is not ready to be a common part of household entertainment.

Think about how long it took for HD to catch on. When those TVs first came out they were extremely expensive and most people could care less about the better picture. Now HDTVs are everywhere, a lot of people own one, and they have seen significant price drops.

3D is going to go down the same road, and Sony is making a mistake by expecting people to go out and buy 3D TVs right now. They're far too expensive and by the time 3D actually picks up momentum there will be far superior versions of those TVs at half the price.

While I have no doubt that eventually 3D will be a major part of home entertainment, it is definitely not any time soon. It won't truly catch on for at least a few years from now.

 

[Miles Tormani]

Cheap plastic ones that you find in cinemas are using polarized light to separate the images. Much more expensive for the equipment (you need two projectors), much cheaper on the glasses. Home 3d uses primarily shutter glasses, which rapidly black out each eye in turn to achieve the effect. This makes the display a little cheaper because you only need one (although the refresh rate of the display does need to be doubled). However, blinking semi-opaque 120 times per second, while precisely syncing this speed with the tv, is quite a technological feat. Hence the expensive glasses.

I was wondering why the PS3 couldn't just polarize two images for Wipeout HD, and just let me use the glasses I got from the theater for Avatar 3D. Now I know why. Thanks for the info.

At least I know that the active shutter glasses for the 3DTVs will likely have rechargeable batteries, and that in some cases they're designed to fit over standard glasses. Granted, I have contacts now, but after many years of frustration trying to find a comfortable pair of sunglasses while I was already wearing glasses, I welcome the idea of them being designed to fit on standard glasses.

That all said, I personally want to just wait until auto-stereoscopic 3D becomes the cheap, affordable standard. I'll probably be waiting awhile, but at least I won't have to buy one pair of glasses for each of my friends that may or may not come over.

Besides, you have to buy the 3D glasses from the same brand you bought the TV from, and probably have to check for compatible models. If you already bought the TV, they have you by the balls.

 

[Jsnoopy]

I don't get why people are so hyped up about 3D. When I went to see Avatar, it was barely noticeable. Sure it gave the movie slightly more depth, but not nearly enough to really even warrant the title of "3D". Plus it gave me a massive headache.

The 3DS is an amazing concept, but I'm still wary that it won't work as I imagine or how they say it will. Then again, if anybody can introduce a new and innovative product to the video game industry, it is Nintendo......

 

[Pendragon9]

Ironically the same people who said the Wiimote was a bad idea, before coming out with Kinect.

I can see them using 3d in their products too, and not too far into the future.

 

[crobulator]

Agreed with Microsoft. I want TRUE 3d with no glasses or TV or anything

Holodeck or GTFO

that is a logical conclusion...... yeah i agree i want true 3d