3D advocates talk obstacles, opportunities

GDC Online 2010: Convention’s Stereoscopic Games Summit wraps up with reps from SCEA, Nvidia, Blitz Games, and more sharing their takes on where the market is headed and how long it will take to get there.

Who was there: Blitz Games CTO Andrew Oliver, moderating a panel of 3D evangelists including Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Alliance’s Neil Schneider, Nvidia’s Andrew Fear, SCEA’s David Coombes, and Schell Games’ Keith Leonard.

What they talked about: Given that every member of the panel has a vested interest in 3D gaming, the primary question of the session–Is Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Here to Stay?–was never in much doubt. Be that as it may, Oliver started the session by making a devil’s advocate argument based on some recent stats surrounding 3D movies. Going from Avatar to How to Train Your Dragon to more recent 3D fare like Despicable Me, Oliver said that the percentage of people who went to see the movie in 3D versus 2D has been dropping consistently with each release.

Schneider called that data misleading, as Avatar was essentially the only 3D film out at the time of its release and had placement in essentially all 3D-capable theaters. As the 3D trend grew, competition for those screens grew in step, and the numbers don’t take into account how many screens the 2D versions of those films played on. Fear was less dismissive of that data than Schneider but said that the demographic for 3D games is different from the one for 3D movies and that all the data on games indicates a healthy interest.

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