Ok, here are some things that came to my mind. They are all very basic and not very exciting, but still:
 

• For my biology studies, I have worked and learned with 3D molecule visualizers. Many of these let you switch to an anaglyph 3D view because, even though they are rendered in "classical" 3D, it is sometimes impossible to make out the actual structure of the atoms, even when you rotate and scale the model. Once you put on the glasses, the way the molecule is constructed is immediatly clear; the 3D effect isn't just a nice thing to have, it is important to get a grasp of the structure.

• A Shmup with a certain degree of freedom to the front and back. Indicating at what height the enemy sprites are flying is possible to make in 2D with size and shadows, but still impossible to make in this kind of game. With 3D, avoiding these on 3 axis would actually be possible and a very new gameplay experience. See the "speed and course of an object" paragraph below.

• Lots of optical illusions stop working when you add depth perception. At a very basic level, I can imagine a game that plays with these different perceptions and would not be possible to play only in 2D.

• Games like plants vs zombies take place on a grid, obviously for playability. Even with polygons and a rotatable camera, players would place the camera so that the units would not overlap one another, to keep them apart more easily. Depth makes different planes of gameplay immediatly and intuitively obvious, allowing for more camera play and less fiddling around.

• Breaking the 4th wall: In the DS RPG "Contact", the player was involved in the game world. Depth can be used as a storytelling medium, where 2D elements are one part of the story, and 3D elements are another, clearly distinguished from one another. You could maybe make a similar distinction using other visual aids, but it probably wouldn't be as powerful, especially if the 3D elements are supposed to speak to the person in front of the handheld.

• Estimating the speed and course of an object. People without depth perception often have problems with estimating when an object will be where, and how fast it is travelling. One-eye visuals work best with clearly distinguishable objects that move at medium speed. Once things are perfectly still or move very fast, our brain has difficulty handling them without depth perception. Videogames have always been designed to not include depth information. Who knows what a developer can do in terms of having the player work with moving objects once the player can use both eyes? Nobody's ever really tried.

• Distinction between a picture and a window. Movies (and games) often play with the illusion that something is reality when it is in fact a flat picture or something similar. Who knows how a game designer could incorporate the player being able to distinguish the two?

" @HandsomeDead said:

" I don't see why you'd make 3D the seeling point of a device if you can turn it off, especially when it's a brand new device. Seems like a lack of confidence in the idea. "

The 3D effects were Avatar's main selling point, and you could watch that in 2D if you wanted to. It has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. "

" @Meowayne said:

" Because that means no games build around the technology, turning it into a gimmick.                                            "

So when the DS came out the stylus was basically mandatory and a bunch of gimmick games came out. They let up on that and games only used it when it made sense. When the Wii came out the Wiimote was basically mandatory, gimmick games, they let up, and mostly only games that made sense used it. So not only are you wrong, you're 180 degrees wrong. You're Bizzaro Superman. "

None of your ideas would suddenly break and make the games unplayable if the user turns the 3D effect off, so the developer doesn't have to choose, he can implement it and it only adds to his audience that people who have trouble with 3D can still play his game mostly unaffected. I doubt you can estimate the speed and course of an object with such an effect better. It's just a small effect that makes things seem more 3D if it's anything like existing techs, it's not gonna emulate a stretch of a mile as if it's in front of you, or have an infinite number of viewing angles (which even normal screens don't, and hey, stereoscopic 3D is still made of what, 2 different images that are still flat on their own?). But hey, if you can do that, it's an added perk for people to wanna use 3D, but again doesn't render it unplayable for people who can't do that, as they have been gaming in this way in the same genres so far anyway. Just like people with one eye can still function fine in the world, even if not as good in certain situations. Many of your ideas are still mere visual effects like Rallier's GUI, just put to more effective use with actual game elements, like the ship in the shmup, or breaking the 4th wall, that 's neat but doesn't make the game unplayable if you turn it off. And again that 5% that wants to provide a unique experience with 3D that has yet to be explained with an example can just write on their cover that it requires 3D to be on, just as it should write it anyway so that people who can't work with 3D can avoid buying it. That the switch still lets people turn it off anyway makes no difference.

" @Icemael said:

" @HandsomeDead said:

" I don't see why you'd make 3D the seeling point of a device if you can turn it off, especially when it's a brand new device. Seems like a lack of confidence in the idea. "

The 3D effects were Avatar's main selling point, and you could watch that in 2D if you wanted to. It has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. "

Avatar is the product, not the hardware. It's completely different. "

• Camera movement completely removes the issue of not being able to see an object's structure, so 3D doesn't really improve anything.
• Doesn't make a difference. If you're looking at the game from a top-down perspective, the 3D isn't going to make anything difference, and if you're looking at it from a lower angle, you could just do it with regular "3D" for the same effect.
• Give me an example.
• Doesn't make a difference. If units overlap in 3D, they're just as hard to tell apart as they are in "3D".
• This is the one example you've given where 3D makes an actual, useful difference, and as you said, it could easily be done using some other effect.
• This is current-day 3D on a handheld device we're talking about, not virtual reality from some science fiction movie. 3D might help with this sometimes in the future, but as it is now, it wouldn't make a difference.
• Again, doesn't make a difference. If either the flat picture or the 3D stuff fill the entire view, it doesn't matter whether you can tell them apart, and if the flat picture only occupies part of the view, you'd be able to tell it apart even without 3D effects. And in addition to it not making a difference, this kind of stuff isn't possible with current-day 3D.

" @HandsomeDead said:

" @Icemael said:

" @HandsomeDead said:

" I don't see why you'd make 3D the seeling point of a device if you can turn it off, especially when it's a brand new device. Seems like a lack of confidence in the idea. "

The 3D effects were Avatar's main selling point, and you could watch that in 2D if you wanted to. It has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. "

Avatar is the product, not the hardware. It's completely different. "

No, it's not. One of the 3DS's selling points is its games' 3D effects. One of Avatar's selling points was its 3D effects. The only difference is that the 3DS is going to have a multitude of games, whereas Avatar was just one movie."

" @Icemael said:

" @HandsomeDead said:

" @Icemael said:

" @HandsomeDead said:

" I don't see why you'd make 3D the seeling point of a device if you can turn it off, especially when it's a brand new device. Seems like a lack of confidence in the idea. "

The 3D effects were Avatar's main selling point, and you could watch that in 2D if you wanted to. It has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. "

Avatar is the product, not the hardware. It's completely different. "

No, it's not. One of the 3DS's selling points is its games' 3D effects. One of Avatar's selling points was its 3D effects. The only difference is that the 3DS is going to have a multitude of games, whereas Avatar was just one movie."

How does that not sound like a complete difference to you? Avatar was a film that was made for different formats because, as of yet, there is no complete widespread use of 3D in all markets whereas Nintendo's 3D console, which would be allowing a 3D standardisation, is allowing you to turn that part off. "

" Ok, here are some things that came to my mind. They are all very basic and not very exciting, but still:
 

• For my biology studies, I have worked and learned with 3D molecule visualizers. Many of these let you switch to an anaglyph 3D view because, even though they are rendered in "classical" 3D, it is sometimes impossible to make out the actual structure of the atoms, even when you rotate and scale the model. Once you put on the glasses, the way the molecule is constructed is immediatly clear; the 3D effect isn't just a nice thing to have, it is important to get a grasp of the structure.

• A Shmup with a certain degree of freedom to the front and back. Indicating at what height the enemy sprites are flying is possible to make in 2D with size and shadows, but still impossible to make in this kind of game. With 3D, avoiding these on 3 axis would actually be possible and a very new gameplay experience. See the "speed and course of an object" paragraph below.

• Lots of optical illusions stop working when you add depth perception. At a very basic level, I can imagine a game that plays with these different perceptions and would not be possible to play only in 2D.

• Games like plants vs zombies take place on a grid, obviously for playability. Even with polygons and a rotatable camera, players would place the camera so that the units would not overlap one another, to keep them apart more easily. Depth makes different planes of gameplay immediatly and intuitively obvious, allowing for more camera play and less fiddling around.

• Breaking the 4th wall: In the DS RPG "Contact", the player was involved in the game world. Depth can be used as a storytelling medium, where 2D elements are one part of the story, and 3D elements are another, clearly distinguished from one another. You could maybe make a similar distinction using other visual aids, but it probably wouldn't be as powerful, especially if the 3D elements are supposed to speak to the person in front of the handheld.

• Estimating the speed and course of an object. People without depth perception often have problems with estimating when an object will be where, and how fast it is travelling. One-eye visuals work best with clearly distinguishable objects that move at medium speed. Once things are perfectly still or move very fast, our brain has difficulty handling them without depth perception. Videogames have always been designed to not include depth information. Who knows what a developer can do in terms of having the player work with moving objects once the player can use both eyes? Nobody's ever really tried.

• Distinction between a picture and a window. Movies (and games) often play with the illusion that something is reality when it is in fact a flat picture or something similar. Who knows how a game designer could incorporate the player being able to distinguish the two?

 This is what I came up with, on a basic level, in 5 minutes of brainstorming in a badly lit room, by myself. Imagine what maybe a set of creative directors, especially Nintendo developers, could come up with to implement depth perception into gameplay. To suggest that no possible imaginable game could, in any way, ever, not also be made on a 2D screen seems like a very bold and blind statement to me.   Look at a tree. Close one eye. A LOT of information and clarity goes missing, even when you move your head around.   When Metal Gear Solid came out in 1998, I think everyone had one or two moments of: "Wha- Oh! That's clever. Why has nobody thought of that before?"; that's what I imagine when I hear "Nintendo is making a console with a 3D screen".  "... but they are expected to make them in a way the 3D can always be turned off" is a disappointment for me, it takes away the incentive and motivation for developers to sit down and think about how to entertain us in new, creative ways. "

Yes? I don't know why you all repeat what I said in that very post. I sat down for 5 minutes with my anaglyph glasses and tried to come up with some crude ideas of things that are, at the very least, superior to a similar concept in 2D space.
I was not trying to draw a concept of the new Pikmin. 
 
There are people whose job it is to spend hours of collaboration and creativity to come up with interactive entertainment. You claim that there is no imaginable way for these people to make games that benefit from 3D screens, and that it is a good thing Nintendo discourages them from doing so. That is what I go against.
 
Nobody is talking about improving game experiences. Maybe I need to clarify this. I am talking about expanding the pool of possible gaming experiences. I want to do stuff I have never done before and never considered possible.

No, we claimed that they're mere visual gimmicks that leave gameplay mostly unaffected if you turn it off so developers can support it and users can disable it with no real issue. I don't see how making a system that won't give headaches to people who can't stand 3D is discouraging developers from supporting one of its features when they wouldn't even have to alter much at all since, again, it's a mere visual effect. No examples given so far show how a game would be developed with different gameplay for use with 3D, and different without 3D, for the developer to choose the latter and not support 3D in the ways he wanted. It's not like it would require extra work to make the two versions' gameplay so different for them to choose to not support 3D just because a small percentage of users is bound to disable it.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it is "a mere visual effect" that can never, ever, in any way have an impact on the possibilities of interactive entertainment. Because of that, I believe games that require 3D to be possible and desirable. Nintendo discourages the development of games that require 3D, at least that is what I get from this news. It might just mean that the hardware is capable of displaying traditional 2D content, which is of course not news at all.
 
 I would have liked a small percentage of 3DS games that are built around the fact that visual depth information is present, because I believe such games are possible. I fully support the idea that in every other game, the effect should be totally optional.  That is all.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it is "a mere visual effect" that can never, ever, in any way have an impact on the possibilities of interactive entertainment.

" Yes? I don't know why you all repeat what I said in that very post. I sat down for 5 minutes with my anaglyph glasses and tried to come up with some crude ideas of things that are, at the very least, superior to a similar concept in 2D space.
I was not trying to draw a concept of the new Pikmin. 
 
There are people whose job it is to spend hours of collaboration and creativity to come up with interactive entertainment. You claim that there is no imaginable way for these people to make games that benefit from 3D screens, and that it is a good thing Nintendo discourages them from doing so. That is what I go against.
 
Nobody is talking about improving game experiences. Maybe I need to clarify this. I am talking about expanding the pool of possible gaming experiences. I want to do stuff I have never done before and never considered possible. "

And I disagree with the idea current 3D tech allows for anything more

"This isn't limited to just kids, but we're aware one in some tens of people, including adults, have difficulty with three dimensional visuals. So, while the 3D image is a special feature of the 3DS, we won't force the player to use the 3D functionality. By making it so that the player can at all times play with [the 3D feature] off, we believe we can comply with those who have difficulty with the 3D view or those who are worried about their childs' eyes."
 

Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose?

" Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose? "

" @natetodamax said:

" Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose? "

3D is probably not everything the "3DS" has going for it. "

It is only the worst-case scenario of this news that disappoints me: Nintendo forcing developers to only release games that are also playable with the 3D effect turned off. "

"

   Herp derp. Put on your anaglyph glasses and imagine what its like playing the 3DS. I look forward to it. "

Well, duh.

I still refuse to purchase a Nintendo product. So yeah :)