10 Ambitious Video Game Gimmicks That BOMBED

The 3D media boom period kicked off roughly a decade ago largely thanks to the stonking box office success of James Cameron's Avatar, convincing many hardware manufacturers that 3D was the next big thing and absolutely here to stay.

And so, 3D TVs became the new technological hotness for a brief time, despite the obvious issues - their price, the discomfort and expense of the 3D glasses, the lack of available content, and the fact that most movies that supported 3D exploited it for cheap gimmickry over sustained immersion.

In the gaming sphere uptake was even worse, with only around 100 major games officially supporting stereoscopic 3D, and many early adopters complaining that 3D actually made the games look less visually appealing, with more frantic games even inducing headaches in some players.

Though Nintendo did admittedly pull off an impressive coup with their glasses-free Nintendo 3DS, for every player who actually used the 3D mode, there was one who turned it off and never used it again.

As phenomenally as the 3DS family of handhelds have sold, the 3D was more a whatever accompaniment than a selling point, and tellingly, the tech was nowhere to be seen on the Nintendo Switch.

3D may well be dead, but at least its most obvious successor - virtual reality - is faring much better.