Sony’s Mick Hocking Talks PS3 3D

With the PS3′s 3D gaming update now out in the open, and the first 3D gaming content and compatible televisions available, Sony’s 3D push is well underway. PlayStation LifeStyle had a chance to speak to Mick Hocking (the director of Sony’s internal 3D team, as well as a senior director for SCEE, looking after Evolution, Liverpool, and BigBig Studios) about how things were going.

He started by noting that Sony aren’t too worried about slow uptake of 3D media, and are supporting the format for the long-haul: “This year is really the start of home entertainment in 3D and you’ll see it rapidly grow in the next few years, as the 3D TVs get out there and the 3D Blu-Ray players, like PlayStation 3.”

He also talked about Sony’s attempts to push developers to work with high-quality 3D, saying that whilst they “can’t actively stop someone making a bad 3D game”, they are trying to teach developers the best methods to implement the technology so that games fulfil their 3D potential.

Asked about the potential competitive edge for players with the best technology, Hocking revealed that Sony were following developments very closely: “It’s a very interesting point; it’s interesting to think that if I’m playing multiplayer and I’ve got a 3D TV and I get a better score than my opponents playing in 2D then what’s gonna happen then? Do I have an unfair advantage?”

And on the topic of user-generated content not designed for 3D use, he said that whilst Sony has a 3D-enabled prototype of LittleBigPlanet, there are currently no plans for a compatible entry into the series, although it is possible: “LittleBigPlanet, if they convert to 3D in the future, has a limited amount of depth in the scenes in the game, so it would work beautifully.”

Hocking dismissed fears about the health implications of extended 3D sessions, saying that it’s the same as current viewer advice of ‘don’t sit too near the screen’, or ‘take regular breaks’, and confirmed that whilst it is easier for developers to work with 3D in mind from the start, it can be implemented later with surprising ease: “We have found that the teams can get the games in 3D in a fairly short time if they want to. Typically, once you put the 3D TV in the studio with some of the latest 3D games on it, they get inspired – you know what engineers are like, they can pretty much do anything as long as you get them inspired to do it.”

Although he did not confirm dates for the 3D movies and photos patches for the PS3 (the 3D photo viewer will support the MPO format though, apparently an “agreed 3D photo format”), and remained coy on the company’s plans for a 3D PSP (“I can’t comment on any future plans for portables at this time… I can say that 3D can be very effective on portable devices and with the small screen size a number of auto-stereoscopic, that is glasses-free, techniques can be used.”), Hocking did reveal that the upcoming MotorStorm Apocalypse and Killzone 3 offer in his opinion the best 3D experiences.

“With Killzone I think the 3D really helps bring the player into the battle, you almost duck out of the way when enemy ordinance flies past you, or the shrapnel from an explosion. In the new game the use of jet-packs is huge fun combined with 3D, you get an immense sense of vertigo looking down through your feet at the action below, or even something simple like when you pull a comrade our of a trench, there’s this real sense of depth, of having to reach down and help your comrade up to safety.”

Hmmm, maybe I’ll have to look into a 3DTV after all.