2006: 'Golden Age of gaming'?

That's the view of UK gamemaker David Braben. In a commentary at the BBC, he likens this juncture in the gaming industry to the 1930s for filmmaking, when movies went from sheer spectacle to serious artform. He says that now, for gaming, the artistic content is becoming "the main driver." The BBC's gaming editor adds that, with the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Revolution (the Xbox 360 was available before the holidays), "over the next 12 months, the most powerful piece of technology in the home is likely to be the games console in the living room, rather than the PC in the bedroom." The explanation is not just next-generation graphics and games, it's media convergence - that word that keeps coming up in turn-of-the-year reporting. These consoles play other media, too, and they are communications tools as well (witness Xbox Live's voice and text chat and text alerts on cellphones).