While the adoption rates for 3D in general have been a bit slow, Sony remains steadfast in its belief that games will only continue to get better as 3D technology improves and more gamers start using it.

Sony's Mick Hocking, who manages Sony London Studios and is the company's internal 3D expert and evangelist, recently spoke to IndustryGamers all about the challenges and opportunities 3D presents to the industry. Hocking believes it's early days still for 3D, though.

"Looking at the future of 3D, I think we’ve really only just begun to realize its potential as a creative medium. With the combination of 3D and motion control gaming with PlayStation Move, I think titles like Resistance 3 are just scratching the surface of what’s possible," he enthused.

At the new, lower price point, the 3DS has sold steadily - but many still openly question whether there is a real future for the platform.

What makes this fascinating is that Nintendo is clearly unwilling to accept defeat lying down. Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata told me in an interview just after the unveiling of the Wii that the company views its console launches more like the launch of toys - if a toy fails in the market, you don't throw up your arms in defeat and get out of the business (a clear reference to those who consistently argue that Nintendo should follow in Sega's footsteps and become a third-party publisher). Instead, you go back to the drawing board and launch another toy. Nintendo's huge warchest of financial assets would allow them to pursue such a strategy, Iwata explained.

Yet even if that strategy remains firmly in place at Nintendo - and given that the warchest is bigger than ever, there's no reason that it shouldn't - it's clear that it doesn't translate into abandoning hardware that's under-performing. Instead, Nintendo has focused its sights on the 3DS, determined to support the platform with an immense push in terms of aggressive pricing and promotion, extensive internal software development, and the calling in of favours from third-party publishers around the globe.

it's likely that we'll have dates for several franchises, and confirmation of work in progress for others, with names like Yoshi and WarioWare being bandied about. For all that the 3DS is still frequently met with claims that "there are no games", this is likely to be Nintendo's fastest and most aggressive schedule of first-party software in many, many years.

What's even more interesting, though, is the work the company is putting into third-party relationships. If even half of the rumours are true, TGS will see almost every major Japanese software publisher lining up to announce major games for the 3DS platform - some of them continuations of long-standing DS franchises, such as Ace Attorney and Etrian Oddyssey, but others being moved over from home consoles, such as an alleged sequel to cult GameCube RPG Baten Kaitos from developers Monolith Soft.

The game maker showed 43 titles for its 3DS and other consoles at the conference. Among titles to be released for the handheld include Capcom Co.’s “the Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G” in December and the "Paper Mario" in 2012, Nintendo said. Capcom said it will also develop the “Monster Hunter 4” for the 3DS.

Nintendo will introduce a slide pad to allow users to play the “Monster Hunter” easier for 1,500 yen in December, it said on its website today.

Nintendo’s 3DS conference precedes this week’s annual Tokyo Game Show in Japan, where about 200 game-related companies plan to showcase their products. Sony Corp. (6758) plans to unveil details of its sales strategy for the new PS Vita handheld player on Sept. 14.

.... MMORPG s are the only retail social games. The problem is there's so much friction that you can't share it as easily as some of these other games [on FaceBook]."

Perry cited World of Warcraft: Cataclysm as a prime example of this phenomenon. "It sold 4.7 million units in its first month. The best one month debut ever for a PC game, which is pretty great, right? Not really. The same month Cityville came out and it debuted on Facebook and signed up 100 million users. If WoW was a Facebook app it would've come out in 67th place. Counting all 12 million lost subscribers and it would only rank in 18th place."

"Another example is Call of Duty: Black Ops. It had the biggest launch in history. So guess what happened next? It had the biggest sales drop off in entertainment history. Sales plummeted 85 per cent in week two. That means they did a great job at getting to the core audience, but not everyone else."
....
he had someone at the office make a video of trying to install a WoW trial. This included filling out forms with a username, password, e-mail, and four legal agreements before having to download the nine gig demo and deal with firewall issues.

"Any friction like that guarantees you're losing customers in a time when the game industry does not want to be losing any new audience."

"34.9 per cent of users will just type garbage into these forms," Perry added. "Another 31 per cent will just skip your product. They don't know how long that process is going to go on. There's no warning."

Perry explained that Apple had a billion downloads in nine months, because they didn't require such outlandish hurdles.

He then showed a video of someone trying to download the Lost Planet demo from Steam starting with installing the service. After four legal agreements, asking what language you speak (after the first legal agreement), signing up, a large download, and 41 clicks it was installed. "There has to be a better way."

Comparatively, running The Witcher 2 on Gaikai's site took only a few. One click brought up a window that would automatically detect whether the game could be played or not on this particular computer, while entertaining the waiting user with videos of developers talking about the game. After about two minutes it was ready to play locally.
....
Perry showed an example of the 20 gig version of World of Warcraft with all the expansions playing entirely on Facebook via Gaikai. He stated that so many users play games like Cityville because they're on Faceook anyway, so by placing more hardcore experiences on there, they'll be played by a whole new audience that would have never spent the money on a console or the time jumping through registration hoops on PC.

"We can plug any kind of game into Facebook. I think it's going to blow people away when they're clicking through a bunch of flash games then they see something like FIFA Soccer, and then they can share that with their friends."

"I believe that games are the number one form of entertainment." Perry declared, "and there are countless users who don't know how amazing they can be."

"Instead of bringing the gamer to the game, bring the game to the gamer."

James Cameron wishes he would have pushed the depth and impact of 3D further with “Avatar” and is doing so with his conversion on “Titanic,” the filmmaker said Wednesday (Sept. 21) at the 3D Entertainment Summit at the Hollywood & Highland Center.
He was overly cautious with his 2 1/2-hour movie for fear of eye fatigue, which he now understands is not an issue when 3D is presented properly.
. . .
Other notable comments by Cameron during his appearance in a pre-lunch Keynote presentation at 3D Entertainment Summit:

* Negative media stories about 3D do not reflect realty of 3D revenue success which is up 40% year-over-year for last four years with projections for similar increase in coming months/years.

* 3D being punished for its own success because limited number of 3D screens result in reduced percentage of 3D grosses for each movie when there are unprecedented number of 3D movies in release simultaneously.

* Any film will look better in 3D.

* Impact of 3D greatest on small, intimate dramas.

James Cameron wishes he would have pushed the depth and impact of 3D further with “Avatar” and is doing so with his conversion on “Titanic,” the filmmaker said Wednesday (Sept. 21) at the 3D Entertainment Summit at the Hollywood & Highland Center.
He was overly cautious with his 2 1/2-hour movie for fear of eye fatigue, which he now understands is not an issue when 3D is presented properly.

The release of Super Mario 3D Land caused 3DS sales to more than double in Japan last week.

According to data from Media Create, reported by Andriasang, Mario's long awaited arrival on the 3DS generated 343,492 sales in the seven-day period ending November 6.

The success of Super Mario 3D Land reverberated in the performance of the 3DS, which sold 145,271 units - a huge improvement of the previous week's total of 65,041.

This goes some way toward vindicating the view - voiced recently by both Nintendo and Ubisoft, among others - that the 3DS's success is contingent on the launch of compelling software.