Sony's booth at CES was an orgy of televisions, many of which displayed 3D content. One of the busiest areas was a display hooked up to a PlayStation 3, where show-goers could get their hands on one of the most-hyped game releases.... in 3D. That's right, Gran Turismo 5 was demoed using the latest and greatest screen and the most over-used gimmick at CES. So how was it?
After putting on the glasses and playing a good session, it's unclear if the 3D effect adds anything of real worth to the experience. The game looks great, and it plays just as well as you could imagine—this is Gran Turismo 5, after all—but after a few minutes I was ready to take the glasses off and play the game using the standard graphics on a normal television.
Seeing both your arms and the dashboard in front of you while the track races by in 3D is definitely cool, but the graphics were dimmer than you're used to from a standard set, and wearing the glasses on top of my normal glasses wasn't exactly an optimal experience.
After playing Gran Turismo, I felt almost like I had experienced a very novel arcade game. It was certainly fun for ten minutes or so, and it's suitably impressive to see Sony's technology shown off with a such a big-name title, but staying at home and playing games for hours and hours in 3D? That's going to be a very hard sell for the forseeable future.
