More Than Just Games

Nintendo 3DS To Be Major Driver of 3D Adoption, Spatial View Says

September 20, 2010 by Jeff Berman|Top News

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- The Nintendo 3DS handheld game system will be “a major” driver in the adoption of 3D, Al Lopez, chief operating officer at 3D technology company Spatial View, predicted at the 3D Entertainment Summit late Thursday. The system, which achieves stereoscopic 3D effects without the need for special glasses, will ship by March 31, Nintendo said. Lopez pointed to the Nintendo device as a potential major boost for the traditional handheld game market after Phil Eisler, general manager of 3D Vision at Nvidia, said mobile phones were the biggest threat to handheld game systems.

The 3DS “will have a broad reach” and will “whet the appetite” for more 3D content and products because it will be the first 3D device that most consumers own, Lopez said. His company makes a 3DeeSlide lens holder accessory, featuring lenticular lens technology, that attaches to the front of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. That lets users view 3D content without glasses, similar to the 3DS.

Games are behind much of the demand for 3D on mobile devices, Lopez said. The 3DS is a good platform for more than just gaming as it offers other applications, including 3D movie playback, he said. Nintendo had yet to say whether movies for the device will be available via download only or via packaged media.

Asked if the impending arrival of the 3DS may increase consumer demand for glasses-free 3D in TVs, Frank DeMartin, vice president of marketing at Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, said it’s possible. He said he hadn’t heard of the 3DS creating confusion among consumers about the availability of autostereoscopic 3D for TVs, but he said that could change when the 3DS hits retail. He warned about over-eager salespeople telling consumers that glasses-free 3D is right around the corner.

Content in general is what will drive 3D demand, said Eisler. Still images will be another large driving force for 3D, he said, predicting we'll soon see stereoscopic 3D cameras integrated into devices including mobile phones.

3D Entertainment Summit Notebook

Attendance at the two-day conference was “well north of 750” people, up from about 500 in September 2009, John Golicz, CEO of Unicomm, a producer of the annual event, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Next year’s Summit will be held at about the same time frame, he said. Also planned is the second 3D Gaming Summit, April 27-28, again in Universal City. But this time it will be at the Sheraton Universal Hotel instead of the Hilton next door, where this year’s 3D Gaming Summit and 3D Entertainment Summit were held.

RealD CEO Michael Lewis predicted that 50 percent of movie screens will be 3D-enabled in the next couple of years. Underscoring a common theme at the Summit, he said there has been a bottleneck at movie theaters over the past few months, with not enough available screens for the growing number of 3D movies. The extra charge to see a 3D movie is increasing and theaters using RealD’s 3D system are “not getting a lot of push-back” from consumers, he said. Moviegoers don’t seem to mind paying more money for 3D -- as long as it’s a good film, Lewis said. The technology is “not going to fix a bad movie,” and consumers don’t want to pay extra for a bad one, he said. Lewis predicted that the 3D eyewear business is “going to be a good” one. Premium glasses can be designed to also function as sunglasses, he said: It’s safe to say that “3D is here to stay."

3ality Digital CEO Sandy Climan warned of the dangers in exploiting 3D. “We have people who are rushing in, using it as a marketing tool,” and overcharging consumers for what’s often been low-quality 3D, he said. “Milking every penny of it” in such ways provides “challenges that could slow things down” for 3D growth, he said. There’s also still an insufficient number of 3D screens, he said, repeating a common theme at the Summit. When it comes to home applications for 3D, the CE industry is “still a little bit in the toddler stage,” said RealD President Josh Greer. Products are being rushed out and there’s a lack of cross-compatibility with many of them, he said. On top of that, there’s still a lack of enough 3D content for the home, he said. It also remains difficult to create and deliver 3D content, and it needs to get to the point where consumers don’t need to be educated about how to use 3D products in the home, he said. Such products should be easy to use out of the box, he said. Richard LaBerge, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Sensio, called 2010 the “year of confusion” when it comes to consumers and 3D. There’s all too often a lack of quality on the content creation and distribution sides of the 3D business, he also complained. In the home, there’s not enough 3D TVs in the market yet or content for them, he said.

Filmmaker Night Shyamalan wishes he had decided to incorporate 3D into his movie The Last Airbender much earlier in the process, he said in a keynote. The movie was shot in 2D and converted into 3D for its recent theatrical release. The director is still getting used to the technology, he said, explaining it’s hard to balance the need to provide 3D effects with the desire to tell a story with subtlety. Some moviegoers expect to see objects being thrown at them when seeing a 3D movie, but that’s not what he has a desire to focus on, he said. He also suspects that many moviegoers don’t want to pay extra to see certain types of movies in 3D, he said. The glasses remain problematic for him also, he said.