Nintendo Might Go 3D With Next Console

In an interview with Japan’s Nikkei, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has hinted that the company’s next home console may, like the freshly-unveiled 3DS, go 3D.

“If you display a 3D image, the image quality becomes extremely bad, so we’d probably do it with the next system”, he said. “We’re thinking that the timing should be once the 3D television adoption rates crosses the 30% mark. We’re looking at the adoption trends.”

This is a curious comment, as it seems to go against everything Nintendo has stood for over the past decade (and longer!). The company lagged behind on disc-based media despite “adoption trends”. It has twice passed on true surround sound. It even said nothankyou to the high definition generation with the lo-fi Wii.

So why the enthusiasm for 3D? Is it that big a deal that even Nintendo is looking at jumping on a technological bandwagon? Maybe not by itself, but if there’s a 3D market and a HD market to cater for (as 3DTV sets also spend most of their time as regular HDTVs), that’s obviously enough to get Nintendo into the game. Or at least thinking about it.

[Nikkei, via Andriasang]