So, I was walking to my class on campus and overheard a conversation about people discussing the xbox one and maybe ps4. Some other times, include people talking about dota and various pc titles. Even before class some were discussing about various games. There were pc gamers, the yearly sports gamers, the regular ones, and some others. It was kind of an eye opener to see how widely spread gaming is. I was talking with this guy who even knew about all of the xbox 180's. Another guy was cracking jokes at the wii u. Maybe, it's just because I was on a college campus so that's there demographic. Have you had in of these experiences? That just kind of surprised me. So how was it back then for the older folks compared to now?

Everyone makes fun of you Wii U .

On topic: Here the only thing you can talk about is Call of Duty, PES and GTA. Don't you dare mention anything different.

Fixed it for you buddy!

Edit: Well atleast he knows what a wii u is xD

Before Sony came in the industry gamings highest selling console ever was 60m. After they entered it became much more mainstream as ps1 reached 100m sales. Ps2 further expanded the audience and of course wii got the older audience to try out gaming as well as get younger kids into consoles. Sony is the first mega corporation to put their full weight behind a gaming machine. They're promoting the gaming guys to CEO while MS doesn't seem quite as sure about it. All these things have helped gaming become "cool"

Thank you NES.

Nope, I knew that the Age of Gaming would come. It was foretold. :))

It'd be nice if we had 500 million gamers around.

Attache rates suck, so we need more players

I'm not surprised. Those of us who played games as kids in the 80s and 90s are now growing up, we have more money to spend on games, and we are introducing it to our kids (I'm speaking in generalities, of course; I don't have tons of extra money, nor do I have kids). And as technology has gotten better, developers have been able to pull off more and more impressive stuff that catch peoples' attention.

There are plenty of other factors, I'm sure. I think it was just a matter of time before gaming started attracting more people, raking in more cash, and really growing as an industry.

I can only remember it being mainstream, so I'm not surprised.

You are 15, that's why.  Things were different pre-PS2.