It is still a couple of months away, but already the industry is abuzz with excitement over the recent announcement of Sony Europe executive Mike Hawking that 3D Blu-ray technology will come to the PlayStation 3 by way of a firmware upgrade in September. That’s not the only development in the making either, as in the same announcement, Hawking also revealed that YouTube–again in 3D–will make its way to the PlayStation 3 as well in the next 12 months. Needless to say, these developments have been a long time coming, and the eventual ability of the PlayStation 3 to display 3D photos as well as 3D videos is much anticipated by many in the consumer electronics market.
In an article published on the Computer and Video Games website, Hawking said that the PlayStation 3 actually already has all the hardware necessary for processing 3D games and videos. Due to the device’s compatibility with the HDMI 1.4 standard, the PS3 can already communicate with any 3D hardware in a TV it is connected to, so it would be a relatively simple matter to update the software and/or the firmware in order to enable 3D support.
While many industry observers expected rival company Microsoft to announce its own set of 3D features with its Xbox 360 console, no such plans have been announced at the time of this writing. At present, 3D functionality is already offered in the Nintendo 3DS by way of a special screen that negates the need for 3D glasses.
In any case, the expected popularity of 3D TVs in the consumer market means that Sony is ideally positioned to take advantage of its early foray into 3D. At present there are only a few contenders to Sony’s 3D-ready console.