10 Reasons Why 3D Gaming Failed

It's over, folks. 3D gaming is over. Nobody wanted it, and even the technology's biggest pushers, like Sony, have given up trying to make us love 3D. Well, unless you count Nintendo's 3DS—but that's a whole different class.

Why? Because 3D is included in the hardware. Because it requires no expensive peripherals or clunky glasses. Because it's hassle-free and easily switched on or off.

But even Nintendo President Satoru Iwata admitted last year that 3D "isn't going to keep people excited" anymore. And those are just some of the reasons why 3D gaming—in the larger, glasses-on, living room TV sense—has failed. Read on for our full breakdown.

It's a fact that 3D televisions are more expensive. But even if most TVs these days come with 3D capabilities whether you want them or not, it's not like the TV itself is the only expense. To take advantage of those capabilities you've also got to purchase expensive 3D glasses that often hover around the $100 mark.

Multiply that by the number of people in your family and it's not difficult to see why most people have chosen not to bother with living room 3D. The real question is how Sony and other companies could have possibly thought that many consumers would go in for all that extra expense on top of a pricy TV in the first place.

And if the cost doesn't stop you at the door, the glasses themselves probably will. They're clunky and prohibitively uncomfortable, and they always provide a more awkward experience than playing games without glasses on.

Hell, I wear glasses every day—and trust me, there is nothing worse than having to put in contacts or wear two pairs of glasses on your face just to play Halo.

Of course the glasses are uncomfortable, but I'm talking about the 3D itself. It's simply not comfortable to view, especially in shooters and other games where the action takes place at 200 miles per hour.

All you have to do is go online to find countless testimonials from people who experience nausea, headaches, eye strain, and more when viewing 3D on their televisions. Some people can't see the 3D effect at all, and for them the screen just looks blurry and out of focus. That doesn't sound like technology that will ever fully catch on.

Graphics are high on most gamers' lists of important features, yet 3D effects often come at the expense of graphical fidelity. Resolution and frame rate are often sacrificed for the sake of 3D, and that means games look worse even for those who can see the 3D effects and don't fall victim to nausea, headaches and eye strain.

That's simply not a trade-off that most gamers are willing to make.

Now that the 3D gaming fad is basically over, it seems few games truly took advantage of it. Maybe it seems that way because few people bought into 3D gaming to begin with, but the fact is 3D gaming simply didn't have a flagship game to really sell the effects to skeptics.

I can only think of a few examples of 3D games off the top of my head, and none of them were enough to make me want to spend all that extra cash on glasses.

Marketing and buzz language for 3D gaming promised it would make experiences more immersive, more engaging, and just plain better, but in reality none of that was true. There's nothing immersive about wearing a clunky pair of glasses on your face and constantly being distracted by cheesy 3D effects.

Some may disagree, but most gamers see 3D for what it is: an unnecessary gimmick that was destined for failure from the get-go.

Sony's UK Vice President and Marketing Director Fergal Gara said it best last year when he told BGR: "In the home people tune in and tune out a bit, and doing that with glasses on and glancing at your tablet or pausing for a bit, compared to the cinema experience which is a solely focused experience, you know there is a difference emerging there."

You know how often you glance at your phone, your computer, a tablet, or someone else when you're playing a game. Whether you're watching walkthrough videos or simply browsing porn while you're waiting for a match to load, you don't want to have to take a pair of glasses off every time you do it.

I have to concede that part of the problem may have been all the negative attention that 3D has received, from the press, from gamers, from average consumers, and from everyone in between, it seems. The demise of 3D gaming may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy when message boards became filled with complaints and vitriol describing the technology.

It's not like 3D hadn't been around for decades already when it started showing up in our living rooms, and if we didn't like it in theatres, why would we enjoy it from our couches? Who's going to buy into a trend that seems destined to fail from day one?

Audiences of journalists and fans at press events were forced to wear 3D glasses during events and presentations. Kiosks in retail stores lured consumers in with comfortable couches and shiny 3D demonstrations. But none of that was enough to draw us in, because 3D was never presented in a way that made it feel like an integral part of the experience.

How is today's 3D different from the cheesy effects that have existed in novelty movies theatres for decades? Even if you know the answer, the fact is most people don't. Those pushing 3D on the masses totally failed to make it "pop."

Finally, the main, undeniable reason that 3D gaming failed is simple: gamers just don't want it. We don't want it now, and we never did. Sony tried to make it happen, and they failed. The 3DS achieved some success because of its glasses-free 3D technology, but it's really been first-party Nintendo games like Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 3D Land and the new Luigi's Mansion game that are keeping the console afloat.

No matter how many times we were told that 3D is the next big thing, we were never fooled into thinking we actually needed it. Hopefully we all remember that when the next next big thing comes along.