10 current-gen innovations that changed the way we play games

This is part of our ongoing series about games and trends of one of the most longest-lived eras in gaming’s history — the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 generation.
As we wave goodbye to this console generation, it’s worth taking a look at some of the coolest things the game industry brought us over these past eight years. We definitely saw a lot of changes, and this was possibly one of the most eventful round of consoles in a long time. We saw motion control. Digital distribution became mainstream over the past few years. Mobile gaming gave handhelds some serious competition. Whether or not you were a fan of some of these, it’s likely that they’ll have a significant impact on how we buy and play games for the foreseeable future.

Motion control makes gamers out of everyone

The Wii isn’t the first console to feature motion controls (we all try to forget the Power Glove was ever a thing), but it’s the first to popularize the idea and do it well. Nintendo’s Wii became such a success that rival console makers Microsoft and Sony introduced their own motion control solutions. Sony launched the PlayStation Move and Microsoft brought us Kinect. Perhaps the most interesting thing that came of this was casual gaming. Players used to traditional control methods saw it as a gimmick, but the ease of control turned the uninterested into full-fledged gamers. Below is a cute video of elderly folks in a hardcore Wii Sports Bowling tournament.