In the past, the video game industry has lagged a bit behind mainstream technology. Video games would utilize existing mainstream technology and ideas in new creative ways to develop a playable experience.
Over the course of the past decade, this has completely flip-flopped. What was the first mainstream device to fully utilize accelerometers? Not the iPhone (2007), but the Nintendo Wii (2006). How crazy is that? It's because of the video game industry that this technology became mainstream in the first place! Now it's in basically every single modern cellphone. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. New graphics card technologies such as CUDA evolved to catch up with ever increasing graphics standards in video games. You know what else CUDA is used for? Predicting protein conformation, medical analysis simulations, fluid dynamics, and accelerated encryption and decryption. Oh yeah, it's also helping the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). It's also what makes Just Cause 2 so freaking awesome. If you've caught onto my point, you know exactly where I'm headed with this.
That's right - the Microsoft Kinect. If you've been following the stories, then you've seen some of the freaking awesome things that people have done with the Microsoft Kinect. You can dance in front of it, or you can record hologram messages. You can pet a virtual animal, or create freaking 3D replicas of a real world environment. Or drive a robot. Maybe in the future, the Kinect will be driving our cars!
Really gives some insight of the role of the entertainment industry.
