With all this talk of the upcoming 8th generation, I started to remember the beginning of the 7th gen. More specificaly, Nintendo's brand-new console. Remember that? They first talked about the system on E3 2004.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33BGyhn_ryw

Note how Iwata is pretty much saying that graphics are not important at all. Some have pointed the Wii success is a proof to that, which is a falacy, and the fact that the Wii U is far behind the PS4/One was a mistake by Nintendo, but that's a whole different discussion. He said that NIntendo was about to cause a revolution in gaming. On the next E3, a prototype of the system was showed, and the company boldly called it the "Nintendo Revolution".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=qt8CBYAnMYc&NR=1

One year later, and the world was impressed with what Nintendo showed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hx07coihqA

Everyone agreed that it was indeed a revolution. It was the next step on gaming. The impressive sales numbers of the Wii helped back up that statement When, a few years later, Sony and Microsoft introduced their own motion sensor controls, it was the definitive proof that was indeed the next step in gaming. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", right? In fact, when the "Project Natal" (which would later become Kinect) was revealed, the press was once again impressed and dubbet it yet another step on gaming.

And I was one of the few people that saw the technology as a minor addition to gaming. It seems to me that the whole world was too distracted by Wii Sports or that impressive trailer of Kinect from E3 2009, that was nothing like the final product...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BRSfCuLYHc

...to even try to think how the hell the majority of games would work with such a technology. FPS and some sports games work fine, yes, but what about fighting games? Action games in general? Racing games? Other sports, like soccer? It either doesn't work, or is completely uninteresting and gimmicky gameplay.  I gotta be honest, I too was impressed by it. When I first played Wii Sports, I was convinced a needed a Wii, but I didn't buy one anyway.

And here we are, about six years after the "Revolution", with a whole new generation on the horizon, and what do we see? Nintendo seems to have forgot about the Wiimote on the Wii U. Sony didn't even mention the Move on their conference, and did anyone cared? Nope. Only Microsoft is still trying to make Kinect something REALLY important, but even then, it seems they dropped the whole idea of "Kinect is for hardcore too!", because it simply wasn't working.

Analog sticks were a revolution. The change from cartridge to CDs was a revolution. If those things never happened, games would be COMPLETELY different today. Try to imagine a world where the Wiimote, the Move or the Kinect never existed. All I see is a world where Nintendo doesn't have a shitload of money, and a console about to hi the 100 million mark.

It's so good to be right!

Wii and DS falsely inflated the industry, everybody started making bigger games because they thought the industry was gonna grow bigger, that somehow these people would eventually start buying PS and Xbox after they tried videogames.

The videogame crash is partly Nintendo's fault, not only because they sucked up all the profits on hardware, but because they failed to convert these new customers into regular long-term purchasers of console games. Nintendoland should've been done in 2010. 

LOL!!! Are you kidding me?! You are truly blind if you cannot see the fundamental shift the Wii/DS caused. It brought the mass market into the gaming sphere. And they are still here and GROWING. True, Nintendo all but abandoned their own 'blue ocean' strategy after 2010/11 instead relying on retro games more and more (NSMB, M:oM, DCKR, Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, NSMB2, Mario Kart 7, etc., etc)

But what Nintendo started Apple perfected and Android adopted and that market is quickly outstripping the traditional console market with it's simple swipe/touch controls. Successful mobile devs are racking in 10's of millions while traditional console devs struggle to stay in the black. Soon they'll be buying them up and converting them (like TenCent buying shares in Epic).

The Revolution is here to stay. Nintendo just failed to stay on the wave.

I hope you are just joking...

What? You completely missed the point. Yes, the Wii and DS appealed to the non-gamers, but if you ask me, the casual crowd is lost to smartphones and tablets.

I'm talking about the motion controls. What difference did that make to gaming general? In fact, think about the best games of the generation and then think if they use motion controls and HOW they use it (does it really change the gaming experience in an unique way?).

I'm half joking.

Serious on the "Nintendoland should've been done in 2010 when Wii was in full cycle in order to bring more people into the Nintendo core franchises ala the Smash Bros effect"

 puh, what a relieve :D

Well, that is one way to see it. First, no company forgot about their respective motion control or how you would call it. Sony has incorporated it in the Dual Shock 4 and showed nice tech demos at this E3. Microsoft uses Kinect 2 as a selling point (yeah, not only in context of games, but still). Nintendo keeps a lot of the motion technology alive in its tablet and furthermore didn't forget about their Wiimote. For example in Pikmin 3 it seems to be the preferred input device. So if that was the revolution of the 7th gen, its effects are still lasting.

Is everybody happy with that revolution? Surely not. Most of the time its use in indeed only of gimmickly nature. But in my opinion especially Wii Sports is a good example of motion controls used right. It's a fun game and somehow addictive when played in groups. Not so much when you are playing it alone. The problem in getting real fun out of motion controls considering the HD twins lies in its late adoption. For example there couldn't be any game for PS Move that didn't use motion control gimmickly, simply because all content still had to be accessible for normal PS3 users (which didn't have PS Move). In this context I image Kinect 2 to be used far better than Kinect 1 and fully understand why Microsoft wants it to be mandatory. In the end it all depends on how creative the developers are. Nintendo and in some way the guys that make the tech demos at MS/Sony are quite good at that.

Lastly, what was the real revolution in 7th gen? Most probably motions controls, yeah, but the acquisition of the often mentioned casual market was also a result of a rethinking in game development. Not only Nintendo with its new hardware should be considered as a trigger here, but also the mobile phone market and the rise of indie development and new ways of distribution (Live,PSN,Steam,etc.).

Whatever came with the 7th gen, I would call it a bigger revolution than analog sticks.

Fair enough. But that's my point: the Gamepad and the Dualshock 4 do have motion technology in it, but they are regular joysticks. And I can't possibly imagine the gyroscope of both controllers being used for anything but gimmicky mechanics.

And you mentioned how much fun Wii Sports is, which I agree 100%. But, like I mentioned, sports is one of the few genres that actually work with motion controls - and not all of them. For instance, how would motion controls benefit soccer games? Try to imagine playing Killer Instinct on Kinect. Or God of War on the Move. Doesn't look so fun in my mind at least.

And I think that out of all the games MS showed on E3, only Crimson Dragon and Project Spark were for Kinect. And Spark is really just voice-commands, which is a whole different thing and actually seems to work well with games. Hell, I think augmented reality is a far more interesting gimmick than motion controls.

You could not be more wrong about this. If anything, Nintendo is supporting the Wii Remote & Nunchuk more than they are their new Pro Controller.

NSMBU uses waggle controls at times. Pikmin 3 is being developed primarily for Wii Motion Plus. Pretty much all of the multiplayer attractions in Nintendo Land use Wii Remotes -- and none of them use Pro Controllers. Donkey Kong Country will support Wii Remotes. Mario Kart 8 supports Wii Remotes, just as Mario Kart Wii did.

You can't seriously look back on the last 10 years of gaming and claim to me that the motion gaming explosion has had little or no effect on the current state of the industry.