All About 3D – Part One

All About 3D – Part One
by Phil Elliott

With most sections of the general public having just gotten used to HDTV and the benefits it can bring, the prospect of talking about the next big thing to happen in home entertainment – 3DTV – might seem surprisingly soon.

But with 3DTVs already on the market and Hollywood set to embrace the technology more fully this summer, here Blitz CTO Andrew Oliver explains why his company`s forthcoming XBLA and PSN title – Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao – incorporates full-on 3D, as well as revealing some of the costs and challenges in the journey so far.

Q: You`ve been working on your latest game – Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao – for XBLA and PSN. How`s that coming along?

Andrew Oliver: It`s due within weeks, we had a few bugs in it that we had to iron out. August is what we`ve been told, and that`s what we`ve told Sony and Microsoft.

Q: You`re putting a game out there that looks like a really nice, solid action title, that fingers-crossed will do well – even without all the 3D stuff.

Andrew Oliver: Well, to be honest that`s the point. It was always going to be a nice game for Xbox Live and PSN, and frankly we know that only a few people – a tiny percentage of people – will be able to look at it in 3D.

But the thing we want to do is… 3DTVs are coming down the line, but the TV manufacturers can`t push the TVs because there`s no content they can show. At some point the 3DTV market will be blown open by Hollywood movies as being a way to get into the home.

But we can do it now – gamers are tech-savvy people, and it seems a shame not to allow them to do it. It became a challenge internally – we got hold of some of these TVs to see if we could do it, and we can. We think it`s all cool, so we`ll let other techy people to see it.

I`m not expecting people to buy new TVs for this game, but I`m expecting at some point that when people want to go and buy a new TV they can look for certain features that are actually starting to appear.

Read the whole story here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/a … d-part-one

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