3-D Falls Flat

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adies and gentlemen, our long national nightmare may soon be over. No, not the economy, not reality television, we’re talking about everything everywhere being in 3-D. Last year, we wondered whether the entertainment industry’s latest attempt to foist 3-D technology on the public would succeed, and now by all indications, it would seem that it has not.

 In the last several years we’ve seen movies, television, and video games all jump on the 3-D bandwagon. Our future was in 3-D, we were told, and we were going to experience entertainment in a way we never experienced it before, with heightened realism and spectacular effects.

But the bad news about the fate of 3-D has been piling up steadily. Nintendo recently announced that 3-D will no longer be the primary focus of its games. It seems that despite the success of the 3DS, most gamers didn’t find the 3-D to be enough to “keep people excited,” as Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently told the UK paper The Independent.

“We've created the 3DS and 3DS XL and also have some games out there that are really using that 3-D effect that we can see, from my point of view, that it's an important element,” Iwata said. “But...this kind of surprise effect wears off quickly.”

Likewise, 3-D movies have been doing poorly at the box office, possibly due to the extra ticket costs involved, but also because consumers are just tiring of 3-D’s novelty.

Also, television manufacturers are seeing that 3-D TVs aren’t generating the kind of excitement that companies hoped. Sales of 3-D TVs have gone up, but not enough to indicate a permanent change in people’s buying habits.

We can’t say that we’re sad to see 3-D go by the wayside again. We’re perfectly content with 2-D images, and we’d prefer our movies, TV shows, and games be good, rather than just visually nifty.