14 DAY TRIAL // This past week, Microsoft has done quite a few interesting things. First off, it sent a nice open letter to gamers, detailing how the company and its Games for Windows initiative benefited PC gaming. Then, one of the main people behind Microsoft strategy declared that they were actively promoting the Xbox 360 gaming console over the PC through their game release schedule. And now the same company is saying that it is interested in developing stereoscopic, aka 3D, games for the PC.
The statement was made by the general manager of the Microsoft XNA, Chris Satchell. In his own words, "this is a very interesting area of graphics technology. We have done experiments with this at Microsoft and the results are extremely interesting. However, the current systems that work well require wearing active shutter glasses and I think it is hard to be mainstream with asking people to wear headgear to play games."
Headgear and games have never gotten along nicely. Most of gaming peripherals outside of the classic keyboard, mouse and game pad are not in high demand and, even if there are some interesting devices out there, like the Novint Falcon, they are not gaining mainstream acceptance. 3D headgear will likely not be a big hit with gamers.
Chris Satchell says that the technology will evolve and will "overcome this obstacle and it will be interesting to see where this leads. So, some way to go yet. I love that some developers are experimenting along this path. It is a great way to move industry technology forward."
Implementing an easy to use and cheap 3D hardware system is a prerequisite for the development of 3D games. Seeing how technology is moving ahead, it might be that the hardware power required for real 3D gaming only becomes available on the PC, which could mean a revival for the platform.