14 DAY TRIAL // Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports, has stated that the biggest franchises he publishes, FIFA and Madden, would not make the move to three dimensions soon because of the costs of the technology and the limited impact they would have on the experience for most gamers.
Speaking to CVG Peter Moore has said, “I've seen a couple of our games running in 3D . There are some cool moments, but there is a cost for my development teams to do it. There is a tax on the hardware - you know, you need two cameras. There is a framerate issue.”
He also says, “I don't think gamers want to sacrifice a smooth framerate. In other words, games that are current running at 60fps going down to 30 just for 3D.”
The head of EA Sports also talked about how three dimensional gaming is simply not well suited to the sports simulation experiences that his division is working on, with blockbuster series like FIFA and Madden NFL being played mostly from a top down perspective, which lessens the impact that 3D gaming would have.
Moore might not be interested in 3D on the Xbox 360, on the PlayStation 3 or on the PC but he apparently has a better opinion of the Nintendo 3DS, which is a handheld and does not require glasses, saying that it offers a “very different experience.”
Sony is the biggest supporter of three dimensional gaming at the moment, seeing it as a chance to make the PlayStation 3 more attractive than the Xbox 360.
So far the biggest hurdle for the technology has been the limited adoption rate for 3D capable television sets, with certain surveys saying that the pace of adoption will pick up during the next year.
EA Sports' Madden NFL topped the NPD Group video game charts for August, selling close to 2 million copies, and a similar performance is expected from FIFA 11.