I realized today that I've had quite a few posts about Nintendo lately. Well, make it plus one. I'll admit that I have a soft-spot for them since the first console I ever owned any games for was the NES.

For a little more background, my first exposure to video games was actually the Commodore 64 (Ducks Ahoy is still one of my favorite games ever!) by way of a Compaq portable computer my dad received from work. It had Pac-Man on a monochrome orange screen. Yeah...

But I was reading the aforementioned Game Informer article about Ubisoft's Red Steel project, and I couldn't help but have flashes of greatness pass before my eyes.

Imagine if you will, Punch Out with a controller in each hand. Soul Calibur with free-form swordplay. Guitar Hero X that has gameplay for the one-armed drummers of the world. An entire realm of gesture-based puzzle game mechanics waiting to be explored. Software that can teach you proper Tai chi hand motions. A painting game that allows you to create and share artwork in virtual galleries.

With video games, there are numerous bottlenecks relating to the technical limitations of hardware. Memory bandwidth, data storage, processing power... In all of these areas, games have advanced at an astonishing rate. From that to this in a little over 15 years.

Sony and Microsoft, in fact, continue to remain very focused on improving the way that games interact with themselves: how many objects can collide realistically, a function of bandwidth and processing power. And they continue to innovate in how the game interacts with the player: the fidelity of the audio and video, again a function of computational power.

But Nintendo has chosen to focus on the other side of the equation, how the player interacts with the game. Despite staggering improvements in video game consoles' hardware, there hasn't been a change to the human interface in about 10 years. It's a little bit hard to believe, when you actually think about it.

So which is more important? It's hardly a question so simple. Do I think that we will still be directing characters with our thumbs 3 years from now? I don't really know. The real question is, do you actually want to? Fortunately, we'll all know a little more in 16 short days.