Peter Walsh – Cohort Studios

New 3DTV hardware will be available for purchase through 2010 driven by the success of cinema releases like Avatar. Sky TV is launching the world’s first 3D television station in April which will drive adoption further. It seems certain that with all sections of industry getting ready to rally behind 3DTV it is something game developers will have start putting in their sights.

Game developers are uniquely poised to develop content to take advantage of 3DTV. Filmmakers, sports broadcasters, animation studios, and just about anyone else involved in TV need to make significant investments replacing their infrastructure of cameras, editing equipment, and so on to handle 3D data. Game developers on the other hand already have all that information readily available. In fact we spend a great deal of time trying to make 3D worlds display well on a 2D screen. To make games work with 3D TV we already have the depth information available – we just need the means to convey that data to the new TVs. Therefore our barriers to entry are very low – 3DTV therefore is a great opportunity for the video games industry.

2010 also looks to be hotting up to be the year of the great motion controller battle. While Nintendo’s Wii has been entrenched in the market for some time, Sony and Microsoft have recently made specific announcements about their offerings. Sony pushed back its new controller to an autumn 2010 launch, and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer promised at CES that Natal would be ready for the holidays. The question many are wondering is how will 3D TV interact with motion controller technology for games?

With varying degrees of “depth” projected by different TVs (and similar TVs of different sizes) it will be technically difficult to match up user perceptions of space with what the motion control hardware can capture. If this challenge can be overcome it could produce a new style of augmented reality. Otherwise it could be confusing if users cannot understand why they can’t accurately touch 3D objects. In time these limitations will be overcome.

Here at Cohort Studios, we think the new developments in controller technology and 3D TV have positive implications for the future. On there own, each provides a great leap forward for increasing game immersion – but together they can change the playing field. Work needs to be done to make the glasses less intrusive and harder wearing, and to standardise the output of 3D TVs so game developers have a predictable platform to work with. Overall we like what we see.

What does the future hold? With new 3DTV technology being heavily backed and all three console manufacturers now putting significant resources into motion based games in 2010 then more convergence between devices is certain. With its low costs to create 3DTV content compared to the broadcasting industry, game developers need to be early adopters of the technology so they can get a head start developing the next generations of 3D capable games.

Quotes from this article can be found on Tech Radar’s 3D gaming piece.