[Press Release]

SEGA® Europe Ltd. and SEGA® of America, Inc. today announced Thor™: God of Thunder and Captain America™: Super Soldier, scheduled for release this spring and summer, will feature eye-popping stereoscopic 3D graphics on the Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system platforms. Additionally, both games will be coming to the Nintendo 3DS™ system later in the year as an immersive new handheld 3D experience.

“Playing as Captain America with bullets whizzing past in stereoscopic 3D and having a titanic Frost Giant charge straight at you in Thor will bring an unprecedented level of adrenaline to the gameplay experience,” commented Gary Knight, Senior Vice President of Marketing at SEGA Europe and SEGA of America. “When you combine the triple threat of epic gameplay, hall of fame franchises from Marvel, and outstanding 3D visuals, it’s clear that Thor: God of Thunder and Captain America: Super Soldier comprise a new class of Super Hero game.”

Both games, which will also be available at launch on the Wii™ system and Nintendo DS™ handheld system, feature original third-person adventures written in conjunction with Marvel scribes.

Creating interactive epics that stand on their own, the games share lead actors and a visual universe with the films based on the same Marvel franchises. Both games will support multiple 3D modes, including anaglyph Color mode utilizing red- and blue-lensed glasses for conventional displays. For active shutter glasses and 3D televisions, the games provide Side-by-Side and Top-Bottom modes, and on PlayStation 3, the higher resolution Frame Packing mode for HDMI 1.4 3D displays is supported.

In Thor: God of Thunder, scheduled to street on May 3, 2011, players will play as Thor while battling through several of the Nine Realms to save his homeland of Asgard. Players will wield the iconic Mjölnir, Thor’s legendary hammer, to fight enemies on an immense scale while controlling the elemental storm powers of lightning, thunder, and wind to vanquish enemies. The sweeping vistas, Thor’s devastating hammer throws, and the explosive elemental effects of Thor’s godlike powers will be especially powerful when viewed in 3D.

Captain America: Super Soldier, scheduled for release on July 19, 2011, transports players to the darkest days of World War II to face the Red Skull and his Hydra army in an epic action adventure. Playing as Captain America and wielding his legendary shield, gamers will engage in free-flowing combat and acrobatic platforming to infiltrate Hydra’s mysterious castle and battle the infamous Iron Cross, the forces of Hydra, and a host of nefarious enemies serving the Red Skull. As the First Avenger himself, players must defeat the evil scientist Arnim Zola and his wartime experiments, combining shield attacks and powerful melee combos to devastating effect. Aside from rich 3D visuals, players will gain gameplay benefits from 3D platform environments inside the castle, with the ability to discern depth aiding in judging leaps from one platform or pole to another.

Both titles will be available for Nintendo 3DS in conjunction with the movie DVD releases later in the year, with action-packed adventures that provide players a new way to experience Thor and Captain America in 3D.

See the original post here: http://www.gamershell.com/companies/sega/837490.html

[By Jared Newman, technologizer.com]

With less than two weeks until the Nintendo 3DS launches in the United States, Nintendo is showing off its first commercial for the 3D gaming handheld. And in doing so, the company has raised a question that comes up every time someone tries to advertise 3D: How, exactly, do you market something that can only be witnessed in person?

In a way, this issue has dogged television makers for years. Back when tube televisions ruled, electronics companies had to convince us of HDTV’s visual fidelity through words or metaphor. That’s true with any incremental improvement in picture quality. But while it’s easy to believe that a new TV simply looks better than an old one, 3D has the challenge of selling the public on an entirely different way of viewing video. Take a look at how Nintendo handles it:

I think the visual effect of jumping into and out of the game is a valiant effort. If I were 20 years younger, I’d probably be flipping out over this stuff, and it definitely does a better job of selling the 3D concept than most 3D TV ads. (My personal least favorite is the one from Panasonic where a family gets sucked into outer space, accompanied by a voiceover from a creepy, whispering child.)

One other thing that strikes me about the Nintendo 3DS ad: the users. These people are my age, which is to say they fall into the stereotypical gamer demographic. In recent years, Nintendo’s made a killing by targeting everyone else.

See the original story here: http://technologizer.com/2011/03/15/nintendo-3ds-ad-grapples-with-3d-marketing/