Nowadays the average viewer has hundreds of channels to choose from … flat screen tellies are the norm … and you can access television through tablets, smartphones, consoles … basically any device that is connected to the internet.
Given the competition from home consoles, arcade machines have to offer something different.
Consoles are even more widespread in Japan, of course, but for many, finding the time and space to play in comfort is tricky.
He followed up by estimating that he had played at least four times as many games of football on consoles as he had in real life – and most of them against Alessandro Nesta.
"Examples might include smart-TVs, new on-demand streaming services, smartphones and games consoles," said a spokeswoman.
4. In the 80s and early 90s, most consoles came with flat joypads.
It turns out that, for years, China has forbidden its citizens from playing on video game consoles, claiming that they corrupt young people's squishy brains (the Labour MP, by contrast, only wants to outlaw "ultra violent" content, which he reckons is turning teenagers into rage-filled monsters).
There are millions of black market consoles in the country, and the motion-controlled Kinect system is openly on sale, although Microsoft says that "it's not used for gaming".
Recently, developers Rockstar released a new first-person mode on newer consoles, encouraging experienced players to go back to the game and new players to pick it up for the first time – and it's this resurgence that seems to have prompted the reaction, along with Target's decision to run an ad placing GTA, an R-18 rated game, in the Toys section.
The health risks from gaming have changed as consoles have developed.
With smartphones at saturation point, and failing to dramatically improve, tablets only getting marginally thinner, and cameras, music players, portable gaming consoles and satnavs killed by smartphones, wearables are currently the most innovative area of consumer technology.
