With its big, bright screen, ability to sense touch and motion, and controls that mimic a home game console’s, Sony’s Playstation Vita delivers the sort of gaming that approaches what you might expect to experience in your den. But is that what gamers still want?

As game consoles become more like cable television boxes, maybe it’s time for video games to start becoming more like cable television shows. Earlier this year, major cable providers Comcast and Verizon both announced that they’d start delivering some of their programming directly through the Xbox 360, forgoing the need for a cable box for at least some of their channels.

Baseball, hockey, football ... “Call of Duty”? If the people behind “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” have their way, the next big sport people around the world will be obsessing over will involve virtual soldiers killing each other in perpetual warfare.

While conceived as a device meant to expand the reach of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming platform by allowing people to play video games without the need for controllers, the Kinect has always been destined for a broader future.

Your cable box is headed for obsolescence. It may not be within the next year, but it could be within the next three that having a box dedicated to TV programming sitting under or next to your television will no longer be the norm. Instead, more universally usable entertainment devices will become the hub for not just video, but pictures, music and, most likely, gaming.

It’s like clockwork; moments after popping open any game that has a mature rating, my 10-year-old son seems to appear at my elbow to ask if he can play it with me. It’s a mix of things that draws Tristan to these games that he knows I don’t let him play. I suspect the fact that I’ve told him he can’t play them tops the list, followed by the fact that they deal with topics considered taboo for most children.

The promise of uncompromising gaming on the go, a sexy new console from the makers of the Wii and a robust lineup of must-have, must-play games topped this year's celebration of all things gaming in Los Angeles last week.

This fall will see the culmination of what has become one of the biggest money-earning entertainment properties in the world: "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare."

The window into a world where I am a submarine commander, a street fighter, a pilot, a Jedi, pops outs at me in stunning 3-D. The diminutive animated submarine seems to float in front of the colorful screen of the Nintendo 3DS as I play Steel Diver. In LEGO Star Wars III, pieces of toy bad guys appear to fly out of the screen at me when my minifig Yoda cuts into them with his lightsaber. But for all of the spectacle of this 3-D gameplay, delivered without the need of any sort of glasses, the most intriguing things about Nintendo's next portable are the things it does quietly in the background.

Before there were virtual farmers in FarmVille and virtual shop owners in CityVille, there was Ultima Online. Considered to be one of the first successful massively multiplayer online computer games, Ultima Online changed the way many developers and players thought about gaming.