OXCGN’s 3D Gaming Comparison

Part III: Xbox 360

by: Alex Baldwin

©2012 Alex Baldwin

We will our lives in three spatial dimensions. We have two eyes. We see two images.

And yet, until recently, our games have only fed us one.

Following on from reviewing 3D gaming on the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation 3, we continue our reviews of gaming in the third dimension on the Xbox 360.

Contents

Part 1: Nintendo 3DS
Part 2: PlayStation 3
Part 3: Xbox 360
Part 4: PC (Nvidia 3D Vision) (coming soon)

Let loose the fanboys!

Microsoft has not trumpeted their support of 3D in spite of several prominent games offering support such as Gears of War 3, Halo: Anniversary, Sonic Generations and Kinect Star Wars. The only way to recognise a game as supporting 3D is to look at the list of tiny green boxes on the back of the case for one stating ’3D support’.

Setup is almost identical to the PS3, with the option to enable 3D hidden in the Xbox 360′s display settings and will result in any enabled game automatically launching in 3D.

Unfortunately, some games do not provide the option to disable this from within the game itself and require returning to the dashboard, disabling the setting and restarting the game.

As expected, the results were close to identical to the PlayStation 3. As most games naturally render at 720p at 30 frames per second (fps) in 2D, this was reduced to a standard-definition resolution in order to render twice the framerate as  needed for 3D, leading to a much more jagged, blurry experience.

However, while the PlayStation 3 uses the standard ‘frame-packed’ method of delivering 3D content of HDMI to a compatible TV or monitor, only the newer Xbox 360 games with 3D use this method.

Some such as Gears of War 3 use a side-by-side method that simply renders two images side-by-side as described, requiring the player to switch the 3D mode on their TV manually.

While all 3DTVs support this, very few 3D monitors do, so some research is needed before purchasing a game specifically for play on a 3D monitor.

Three dimensions of… annoyance?

Overall, the in-game experience is much the same as the PlayStation 3 but those few extra usability niggles and reduced game selection put the Xbox 360 slightly below its Sony counterpart.

So far, Nintendo is dominating this genre, and without even a great score.

Look back very soon, because we’ll be tackling the fourth and final iteration: the PC.

“5/10

©2012 Alex Baldwin

Filed under: Oxcgn Special feature, Xbox 360 Tagged: | 3d, 3d gameplay, Gears of War 3, halo anniversary, Kinect Star Wars, Microsoft, three dimensional video game, three dimensional video gaming, Xbox, Xbox 360