My friend Kevin and I have been engaging in a  little debate on Facebook about  the future of gaming, based on a C|NET article from the Gamer's Development Conference that includes a comment from PlayFirst CEO John Welch that casual gaming will "soon eclipse hardcore gaming."

My response was that Welch is looking at the short term. Sure, there has been a big surge in some casual gaming, with the emergence of gaming platforms on Facebook and the popularity of sites like EA's Pogo. And in the short term, as baby boomers continue in their somewhat-web-savvy explorations, there will probably be a huge upswing in the number of people purchasing and playing casual games.

But where Welch misses the point is that there is a generation coming up who weaned directly from baby food to PSPs, and these aren't the children of gamers.

Among the other parents of my children's friends, there is only one other set of parents who could even be remotely described as gamers. And, like my husband and me, they have severely limited the gaming of their children, with no handheld units until middle school (or close), and very limited time allowed on any other system. In our house, I'm the PC gamer, while my husband is the console gamer. Up until the past few months, we've had only an Xbox in the house, with exactly three games that the children could play, and they did so on rare occasions. They got a Wii for Christmas, but game play is still limited, and it's the first thing they lose when tasks aren't completed or they disobey. The only handheld games they are allowed are their Leapsters, with time limited even with these educational games.

The other parents? The amount of gaming that my children's peers engage in is mindboggling. For parents with the means (and even some without), it's not unusual to find 8- or 9-year olds with their own television in a bedroom, Wii and PS2 alongside and changed out on a whim. My children whine that they are the only ones without a PSP and/or a Nintendo DS, and I see their friends walking to the bus stop, or in the grocery store with a parent, head down, thumbs in motion. There are kids my children know who refuse to leave their houses without their handheld game unit, playing it everywhere from family parties to shopping trips. I was recently at one birthday party held at Chuck E. Cheese where a child HAD A DS IN THE ARCADE. It was positively stupefying.

We have a fairly decent selection of games for the Wii, from the Wii Sports that came with the console to Game Party (which includes darts and skee ball) to Big Brain Academy. Without fail, the kids gravitate toward the traditional "gamer" types of games, like LEGO Star Wars and Mario Galaxy. Their friends, most of whom have parents who wouldn't know a FPS from an MMOG, do the same. I don't think these kids are going to be enamored with the novelty of playing a Scrabble-lookalike on a social network. They are going to want their brain-powered controller to play their VR games. And if game companies don't see that in their long-range plans, I think they are going to have problems.