Sony has stated that the PS3 will be the first system to take advantage of the upcoming release of 3D televisions. How Sony will implement this new feature into PS3 systems is through a firmware update.

The announcement was made at the 3D Gaming Summit in Los Angelas, California by Sony platform research manager David Coombes. He explained what will be affected with the new firmware updates and how they will even effect certain games.

The 3D-enabling firmware update will actually come into two major waves. The first major update will enable 3D for gaming or games that enable 3D. The second firmware update will be for 3D blu-ray movies and will happen “a short time after the first”.  Sony even said that customers who purchase a 3D ready television from them which will be coming out in Summer 2010, known as Sony’s 3D Bravia Televisions, will recieve 3D updates on Wipeout HD, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, Pain, and Super Stardust HD. However, it was also confirmed that there may be difference between UK customers and NA customers when it comes to this as well. The games however will be bundled in with the first slate of Sony’s 3D televisions.

Also with the 3D televisions, there is also the necessary purchase of the 3D glasses and the emitter thus adding to the price. As of now, the price of 3D televisions will not go up by much since it is more of a firmware update on the television but it is also been confirmed that most televisions prior to this major 3D movement that state they support 3D will really NOT support 3D. So in a way, this is maybe another way for more puchasing hardware for your home entertainment system.

More information will be given to you readers as they come by. Look for the release of 3D televisions, glasses, and emitters coming around summertime of 2010 as well as the PS3 firmware updates.

-- Alpha Jan

Patrick says: While it's nice that Sony is adding support for 3D TVs early on I think the only reason they're doing it is to sell more of their 3D HDTV's. Why do I say this? Unless the technology is very much different than before in order to produce the stereoscopic effect the games will have to render each frame at least twice, thus halving performance. Considering most modern games are already pushing the console's rendering capabilities I doubt most games will be able to support 3D.

I expect 3D stereoscopic vision to be the major selling point for the next-nex gen of consoles. Besides dynamic tesselation and other rendering methods that only nerds will get excited about I also expect that more games will support 4-player split screen. Why? If geometry can be dynamically adjusted based upon performance then there shouldn't be any reason why all games couldn't handle any given scene.