Board games were always a great way to bring the family together. The early consoles and arcades were very much billed as family entertainment. With the rise of the PlayStation era, games got more focused on the core demographic and radically changed the public opinion of gaming, pigeonholing it as a pastime reserved for the solitary geeky young male.

Nintendo have started to break away from this trend with the Wii, and it appears Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, thinks the world is ready again for more public, social gaming:
Nolan Bushnell Looks to Social Gaming Holodeck Come True via Kotaku

Love the idea, hope it gets traction. The key issue will be breaking the public’s perception of what a gaming centre looks like these days

Not personally crazy about the name UWink. But hey, I think I’m still in denial over Nintendo naming their latest console the Wii, and it’s gone on to sell a couple of units.