The 3DS will soon be on its way to consumers' hands and 3D has a lot of people wondering how the technology is going to translate to consumer acceptance. While 3D TVs and 3D capable games on the PS3 and eventually the Xbox 360 are bound to happen, Nintendo has revealed that such technology has been possible for some time now.
Satoru Iwata has admitted that Nintendo has been working on 3D for over 20 years, starting with former president and CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, who used to ask developers “can you make it jump out?”
Nintendo’s work with 3D is even evident in such consoles as the Gamecube and the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo noted that if attached to a special LCD screen, games like Luigi’s Mansion were fully capable of displaying in 3D. Due to cost though, the company decided that there was simply no market for the technology at the time.
Even the glasses free technology displayed on the 3DS was possible, as Iwata remarks that the Game Boy Advance SP had a 3D capability that did not require glasses. Unfortunately though, the resolution was far too low and the project never made it out of research.
That research has become applied as the company looks forward to finally releasing a 3D capable device in just a couple months. It has been over 20 years in the making, and after such failures as the Virtual Boy and even several 3D projects on the Famicom Disk System, Iwata is definitely looking forward to avoiding a commercial failure as seen in the Virtual Boy.
The 3DS is expected to have a March released in the states, but Nintendo is holding a press conference in New York on January 19 to confirm details.
[Thanks Andriasang]
