Think for a moment: When was the last time there was a major hardware innovation that actually elevated gaming as a whole?

The Wii’s motion controller was great at selling Wii’s, but not at doing much else, and the industry has already (wisely) pivoted away from motion controls. The only hardware innovation I have any interest in at this point is VR, but I feel like that’s still a couple years out from commercial viability.

The PC has been keyboard and mouse from almost day one, yet plenty of innovation has happened in PC gaming, because developers are great and creative and the more raw hardware power you give them, the fewer limits they have and the more walls come down between their ideas and the reality of implementing those ideas.

It’s time console makers stopped worrying about what gimmick to add to their next console, and instead realize that they are best served by giving innovative developers the tools and the marketplace they need to take their ideas and deliver them to a captive audience.  If they want to innovate, give us innovative services that developers can leverage, like cross-buy, cross-save, and remote play – don’t just glue a screen onto a controller or pack your console up with a motion detecting camera and expect those gimmicks to sell your new console.