Game Interfaces and Why Advertisers Should Care

Ever since Nintendo shipped out the NES with a "Zapper,"

... console manufactures have dabbled in interfaces beyond control pad and buttons.

These attempts were usually commercial failures.

The Wii changed this.

Suddenly, people were up and moving. People who hadn't ever been interested in games before were enthralled. My own grandmother bragged to me one day about her Wii Fit score. Nintendo had redefined a market they originally created.

What's more interesting, 6.38 million Wii remotes were created and distributed.

All of them using a standard USB for I/O.

Suddenly, people began to hack.

This opened people's minds. Consumer technology become a playground limited only by ingenuity. Products initially intended for game use ...

... were given new purpose. And almost universally, the software to run these devices was released open source.

This pattern has continued as interfaces become more complex.

These tools become fodder for increasingly complex experimentation.

Combined with the lowering costs of 3D software and the the glimpse of augmented reality that we've already seen ...

You can probably understand why advertisers should care about the game industry.