As the Avatar buzz has faded, ticket sales for 3-D films have dropped off. A clutch of 3-D TVs released last year never really caught on. So this is the perfect time for the videogame industry to invest huge sums in stereoscopic entertainments, right? Maybe not, but most platforms are taking the plunge anyway. Will they reshape the industry—or give migraines to a few dozen early adopters? Here's how we rate the four big contenders.

PlayStation 3
Equipment needed: A 3-D TV with an HDMI 1.4 connector. Those stupid glasses.
Setup: Fairly easy. A firmware upgrade adds 3-D support for games (and Blu-ray movies).
3-D games: Lots of titles by Sony (Gran Turismo 5, MotorStorm, Wipeout) plus 50 new games slated for release this year.
Stereoscopic score: B+

Windows
Equipment needed: 3-D graphics card; 3-D TV or monitor. Stupid glasses.
Setup: Nightmarish. Lack of unified standards means mixing and matching equipment and tweaking lots of software settings.
3-D games: Tons. You can tell your PC to render most games in 3-D. (Worth the excruciating setup.)
Stereoscopic score: B+

Xbox 360
Equipment needed: 3-D TV. Stupid glasses.
Setup: A bit harder than PS3, because Xbox 360 doesn't support HDMI 1.4 standards. Settings on some 3-D TVs and game consoles will need to be adjusted manually.
3-D games: Just a few third-party titles like Crysis 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Stereoscopic score: B-

Nintendo 3DS
Equipment needed: Just the 3DS, which launches in March. The 3.5-inch LCD display allocates 400 pixels to each eye. No stupid glasses required!
Setup: Nonexistent. A 3-D depth slider—a sort of volume knob for dimensionality—lets you tweak the depth of images on the fly.
3-D games: 30 by summer.
Stereoscopic score: A