Sony taking a cautious approach to 3D
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Make no mistake, Sony are very excited about the PS3′s capabilities to offer 3D gaming, but don’t expect them to be investing heavily in 3D games in the near future.
Ian Bickerstaff, senior engineer with Sony Computer Entertainment’s UK-based stereoscopic 3D team, told to Gamasutra, that the company was taking a “cautious approach”, hinting that the level of investment will depend on the uptake of 3D televisions.
Sony’s strategy makes sense because new technology normally has a slow uptake. To buy a 3D television in 2010 you will have to pay a premium price, so for this year at least 3D may be a bankers pleasure only.
Bickerstaff may be bracing himself for a slow uptake, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t optimistic that 3D will be the future of gaming:
“We’re not going to spend crazy, crazy amounts of money [on 3D games] expecting everyone tomorrow to have 3D TVs, clearly, but, we believe this is the future, and three or four years from now, you won’t be able to buy a television that doesn’t have a 3D capability.”
When quizzed about the interest that developers have shown in the new technology, Bickerstaff was reluctant to go into too much detail, but did reveal that he had been “amazed by the enthusiasm from the developers.”
It also appears to be the case that examples of 3D gaming we have seen so far like Super Stardust HD and MLB 10, has been entirely down to the developers grasping onto the technology as opposed to Sony issuing a mandate for them to use it:
“To be honest, we have not had an internal project to throw at people to make their games in 3D, yet there are loads of games in 3D, like [MLB 10], Super Stardust HD, that looks fantastic, and so on. And that’s really just because of the enthusiasm from the developers themselves.”
As it stands, both developers and Sony appear to be salivating over 3D, but how much Sony will be willing to invest into developing great games will depend on whether the public buy 3D televisions or not.
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