Nintendo Begrudgingly Acknowledges Wii U 3D Support

Among console makers, Sony is the company seemingly most invested in the still fledgling 3D TV market, with multiple PlayStation 3 titles scheduled to take advantage of the technology in the future. Granted, a great deal of that might have to do with the fact that Sony makes 3D TVs, but hey, support is support, right?

As it turns out, Sony may have some 3D-enabled console competition in its near future. Sort of.

Speaking to the Mercury News, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata let it be known that the Wii U will also include support for those with fancy 3D televisions, albeit via least ringing endorsement you've ever heard from an executive talking about a feature contained within a new piece of console technology.

If you are going to connect Wii U with a home TV capable of displaying 3-D images, technologically, yes, it is going to be possible, but that's not the area we are focusing on.

When it comes to 3-D, we already have the 3DS, and each owner of the Nintendo 3DS is capable of viewing 3-D images. However, when it comes to the home console, it depends upon the availability of 3-D TV sets at home, which, unfortunately, is not expanding enough. And rather than pouring a lot of energy into that kind of area, with the Wii U we'd like to focus more on each Wii U owner being able to have an equal opportunity to enjoy it.

Well then, uh... get hyped? I guess?

Nintendo's stance on the situation does make some sense given the currently meager level of market penetration 3D TVs have in the average home. Adding in support almost sounds like a purely precautionary measure, just in case this 3D TV thing suddenly blows up big. And if it doesn't? Well, we can just pretend we never even had this little conversation, and go on about our 2D business as we always have, no worse for the wear.

Threeeee Deeeee!!!

Nintendo is making all the wrong moves. Every article since E3 simply leaves me baffled on what they intend to accomplish with the new console.

EDIT: Oh, and yeah, of course it will have 3D support, they are playing catch up.

3D!!

@xingwa said:

So will the Wii U make your 3d TV glasses free like the 3ds?

Glasses-free 3d can only happen on the TV level, and even then, glasses free 3d is sketcky, just a concept currently

I'd like to see some games for it now,  i know its strange but thats what i like about games consoles

Future proofing Iwata, it's called Future Proofing.  
 
You think after the internet, friend codes, and HD you'd realize this buy now and would include technological features in anticipation of a growing market. 

We Beliebe...

Future proofing Iwata, it's called Future Proofing.   You think after the internet, friend codes, and HD you'd realize this buy now and would include technological features in anticipation of a growing market. 

Nintendo is making all the wrong moves. Every article since E3 simply leaves me baffled on what they intend to accomplish with the new console.

@Dany: So you would prefer if Nintendo focused on the 3d market? Do you have a 3d TV? I certainly don't and would prefer if Nintendo didn't focus a large portion of their resources on a very small portion of the market.

Nint3nDo.

Those bastards had it planned from the start!!!

7D!

@Bass: @paradox121: @goodlucktj: edited my post to reflect this article. Yeah 3d support was going to happen, I was refering more to the one controller, online structure, graphics capabilites and well, limitations it appears to have even before it comes out.

@Bass: @paradox121: @goodlucktj: edited my post to reflect this article. Yeah 3d support was going to happen, I was refering more to the one controller, online structure, graphics capabilites and well, limitations it appears to have even before it comes out.

haha (grumbles) I suppose, the goddamn thing has 3D.. (grumble)(grumble)

@paradox121 said:

@Dany said:

@Bass: @paradox121: @goodlucktj: edited my post to reflect this article. Yeah 3d support was going to happen, I was refering more to the one controller, online structure, graphics capabilites and well, limitations it appears to have even before it comes out.

So you posted a negative comment before even bothering to read the article? Huh. How I love the internet.

I read this article yesterday on joystiq. I knew my post was not reflective of this specific article but on the general trend of recent Wii U announcements. I simply edited my post.

Nintendo have an atrocious job at promoting this console. They seem really unclear as to what they want to tell us about it yet we seem to find it all out anyway. What's worse is that all we seem to be finding out about is bad shit.

When the Wii was getting released, they said the same thing about HDTV's when they were beginning to hit mass market penetration. Look how that blew in their faces.

****Yes, I know the Wii has and still sold like crazy, but that's not the point****

I'm not 100% behind 3D technology at the current time, but you never know. 3D is sure to only become cheaper (and thus more widespread) as time goes on.

Nintendo said the EXACT SAME THING about HD, almost word for word. Replace 3D with "HDTV" in that statement, and it's what they said in 05. 
 
 They're incredibly short sighted when it comes to television technology.

When the Wii was getting released, they said the same thing about HDTV's when they were beginning to hit mass market penetration. Look how that blew in their faces.

****Yes, I know the Wii has and still sold like crazy, but that's not the point****

I'm not 100% behind 3D technology at the current time, but you never know. 3D is sure to only become cheaper (and thus more widespread) as time goes on.

And we wonder why companies aren't as honest with us as they are.  Nintendo is telling us their game plan, the console is 3D capable but it's not going to be a priority, and we're ragging on them.  This is the reason we get fed bullshit by Microsoft and Sony (and Capcom) all the time, it's easier to build false hype for something and just drop it when you've already hooked the customers. 
 
I have no interest in 3D gaming, but if I was a gamer who was interested in 3D gaming, I would be glad Nintendo told me it's not really something they're going to push.

Nintendo said the EXACT SAME THING about HD, almost word for word. Replace 3D with "HDTV" in that statement, and it's what they said in 05.   They're incredibly short sighted when it comes to television technology.

No FUCK   all you need is a GPU that can DRaw 2 fucking frames at the same time and send it off to the fucking monitor, and that means any fucking Recent GPU no matter how crap it is. 
 
Fuck you could even do this crap with direct x 8 GPU's a million years ago. 
 
It is almost  Dolby pro logic 2 for fucking video except for 2 fricking stereo channels that need to be processed by the audio equipment it's 2 video frames. 
  
And the only thing hold the slow ass wii back from doing 3d is most TV's only   process it over HDMI.
 
Thanks for saying the obvious  Nintendo and news people. 
 
http://www.nastyhobbit.org/data/media/13/obvious-master.jpg 
 
 
Now go find out what that crazy metal gear guy is going to say today it is more important Oh and it's going to be about snatcher they will announce it down the line it exist.
 
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/07/08/kojima_announcement/

Nintendo have an atrocious job at promoting this console. They seem really unclear as to what they want to tell us about it yet we seem to find it all out anyway. What's worse is that all we seem to be finding out about is bad shit.

Nintendo is an equal-opportunity fun-maker.

Nint3nDo.

Those bastards had it planned from the start!!!

Still not interested in 3D gaming but if they include it I guess that's alright...

Kinda hard to figure out what Nintendo will make of this console...we need more info and games!

This is disturbingly similar to the statement they gave when they justified the Wii's lack of HD support, although it admittedly may be more logical stance to take this time around.

@Dany said:

@xingwa said:

So will the Wii U make your 3d TV glasses free like the 3ds?

Glasses-free 3d can only happen on the TV level, and even then, glasses free 3d is sketcky, just a concept currently

Glasses Free 3D laptops, monitors and TVs are just about to reach us all. Some have already been launched and released. They are all well beyond the concept stage. It's just that the reporting of such news has been lost in the mire of everything else that's been happening (iPhone Jailbreak, PS3 hack, PSN takedown and such).

@FreakAche said:

This is disturbingly similar to the statement they gave when they justified the Wii's lack of HD support, although it admittedly may be more logical stance to take this time around.

While it is definitely similar, I think they are spot on with this decision whereas HD was certainly a mistake. At the time of the Wii, HD may not have had all that much market penetration but it was certainly catching-on and now is pretty much the standard (especially for gamers). It was foolish of them to not focus their technology a bit further out into the future. 3D technology in terms of home televisions though not only doesn't currently have market penetration but it does not seem to be something that is going to be a common occurrence in the home environment within the next 4 years or so (in it's current glasses-requiring form). Sony is all about it because they make the expensive new 3DTVs as well.

Frankly, I would like to see the focus shift from 3D in a home TV setting and onto higher resolution displays because we can definitely do better than 1080p in the future. I mean, my Sega Genesis says "High-Definition Gaming" on it and look how far we've come from that definition of HD already.

/ramble

@Mikazukinoyaiba said:

Future proofing Iwata, it's called Future Proofing.   You think after the internet, friend codes, and HD you'd realize this buy now and would include technological features in anticipation of a growing market. 

A slowly growing market that is growing because you get it for free if you buy a new TV. Yea right, that's totally the same as the Internet.

And we wonder why companies aren't as honest with us as they are.  Nintendo is telling us their game plan, the console is 3D capable but it's not going to be a priority, and we're ragging on them.  This is the reason we get fed bullshit by Microsoft and Sony (and Capcom) all the time, it's easier to build false hype for something and just drop it when you've already hooked the customers.  I have no interest in 3D gaming, but if I was a gamer who was interested in 3D gaming, I would be glad Nintendo told me it's not really something they're going to push.

Actually I read the whole statement as a pretty pragmatic, honest assessment of the current market penetration of livingroom-type 3D technology. Definitely sounds like a prudent stance towards that particular technology at the moment, and it also makes sense in the context of Nintendo's current hardware portfolio.

This is probably the most reasonable way to go about it. I mean I can't be sure but I'm really hoping this 3d craze ends up being a failed fad. It's good that they give you the option but better that they aren't going to push it. I also appreciate how they're not revealing too much since the console won't be out for at least a year.

Nintendo was right about online gaming, too. ;)

Oh, and not using disc drives because they "make games, not movies."

Ugh, nintendo. You have seriously lost me on this.

Yea I am not buying a 3D TV anyway.

People look for any reason to shit on Nintendo. Oh well, I just went HD, so I don't see 3D in my future for a long time.

So it'll be fine while looking at a 3D TV but as soon as you have glasses on looking at the new controller whats gonna happen? 
FAIL!

I am not a fan of 3D with glasses!

When are people going to stop doing 3D, the 3D part of the 3DS is one of the worst things on the 3DS

Just leapfrog the 3D business into holographic imaging.