Well here we go again, a new technology that will be pushed for acceptance but will eventually fail. I’m of course talking about Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. Oops, I mean 3-D gaming).
If you have been watching this past Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the big buzz has been around 3-D televisions. Some big names like Panasonic and Sharp have been showing off some new televisions with this new 3-D technology. Aside from this problem from the gaming world perspective is that there are just some general problems I see with this even being in your house, aside from having things like Natal being pushed on us even though that does seem better at CES from last time we saw it.
The first issue I see is the price. Do you remember the price of HDTVs back when they first came out? The higher end models were about $5000. During a recession and high unemployment the market is now introducing a new television they expect us to buy?
My second issue is with the 3-D glasses themselves. Imagine you bought your shiny new 3-DTV and you brought all your friends over to watch the big game. That’s when you notice you only have four 3-D glasses for you and your eight friends. To resolve the issue you have to kick some of your friends out, or host smaller parties. Now that you’ve kicked out some of your friends, one of your friends has reading glasses. You now have to tell him to wear both sets of glasses, shut up and enjoy the new TV. That’s not to mention that some of the 3-D glasses require batteries which is excessive weight.
Now to speak about gaming issues. Everyone of us who went to see Avatar and thought it was awesome. Well that’s all and good until you try the game itself in 3-D. This is a bad idea to begin with because movie game are always bad no matter what. Secondly if you have ever seen any movie that was 3-D, I found it is a headache to keep those glasses on my eyes for long periods of time. With the 3-D glasses that require batteries this causes more of a problem, because I can game for days at a time and prolonged usage could cause migraine. If I’m wearing glasses with batteries in them, I might as well be wearing the night vision goggles I got with Modern Warfare 2 (at least they are cool). The thing that bugs me the most: HD gaming is the expensive cost. Even now it’s still a big chunk of money out of your wallet for the HDTV, the cables and the surround sound. But switching over to a new format when not everyone is already on HD seems ridiculous to me.
Yes it does sound cool, but it’s just not worth it.
So how are they going to market it to us? Well, it’s a “brand new experience” and “immerse yourself in the game”. Well, that’s crap. First of all, I don’t want to be immersed into a game by having its characters thrown at my face. When I get immersed into a game, I would rather have it done by a great story like Uncharted 2 or Final Fantasy 13 ( it’s not out, but I’m hoping for big things).
I think it will eventually catch on. Yeah the idea of wearing something on your head for hours on end that require batteries is gonna suck. But many times has technology came out ahead of it’s time, but eventually catch on. Eventually we are gonna go more virtual reality. One step at a time eventually we’ll get there. Of course I will buy it because I want to demonstrate it at the schools, but for the average person this may be too expensive. People want to try stuff like this but may not buy it for a while. So yeah, I doubt I’ll be able to sell stuff like this.