The 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is underway in Los Angeles, and motion-control gaming in an unavoidable trend, with Microsoft and Sony both releasing their own platforms for games that get your body moving. Adding their own tweaks for gamers, the new consoles provide high-definition graphics and allow users to rely less on the controller and more on a full-body experience.

Bitmob editor Dan “Shoe” Hsu attributes the consoles’ popularity to the success of the Nintendo Wii. “It brough a new casual audience. We kind of make fun of it — ‘Oh the soccer moms are playing video games now, too’. Sony and Microsoft saw how much money Nintendo was making from this and they want a piece of the pie as well.”

Three-dimensional gaming is also making headway at E3, thanks to movies like Avatar, but Hsu says 3-D is yet to be a game-changer. “It’s very expensive to make a game and it could take up to a couple of years,” he says, “so [game-makers] want to hold off on spending too many resources making 3-D games until there’s a big installed base of 3-D televisions.”