James Cameron: Games Will Drive 3D Display Sales

Film director James Cameron is perhaps the most notable creative force behind the push for 3D entertainment: his 2009 film Avatar is still the textbook example of what a 3D film can do, his collaboration with Ubisoft resulted in the first cross-platform stereoscopic release with Avatar: The Game, and earlier this month, he and fellow filmmaker Vince Pace announced the formation of the Cameron-Pace Group, a company that will develop new 3D technologies as well as serve as an industry advocate for stereoscopic imagery. Speaking at his company's reveal in Las Vegas earlier this month, Cameron said that it will be video games -- not films -- that will drive the sales of 3D displays in the home. "Video games are going to be the drivers, but they haven't done so today because the cycle creation has lagged behind," Cameron told Yahoo! Games blog Plugged In. "The consumer electronics companies introduced these screens last year, so we're a year into this and it takes 18 months to two years to author a high quality video game. So you're going to see a stampede of video games and then that, in turn, is just going to catalyze more broad scale adoption in the home of these big 3D screens." Cameron also said that adoption of Nintendo's 3DS will help propel the development of larger glasses-free displays, which the director says is a hindrance in the adaptation of 3D technology in the home. "You're distracted at home. You're doing other things. You're pausing a game or a movie and going to get pizza or whatever it is," said Cameron, discussing why 3D glasses don't work well for home viewing. "It's not the same very-dedicated sort of consciousness that you have in a movie theater, so getting rid of the glasses will be a big deal." Cameron also said that the Cameron-Pace Group is "looking to do" an MMORPG authored in 3D and set in the Avatar universe, but that the company is not actively developing such a project at this time.