Brooklyn-based MakerBot is a darling of the 3D printing community, and it recently moved into its new digs in Sunset Park, so the crew can more efficiently build and ship their shiny new Replicator 2 and 2X printers. Call it a classic case of growing pains — once demand for 3D printers started picking up, the MakerBot team soon found themselves aching for even more space to work in, and we got the chance to tour the new 50,000-square-foot facility when it opened last week.

All things considered, it’s a nifty operation, and the move should help MakerBot cope with growing prominence as the 3D printing movement slowly moves into the mainstream… especially as it attempts to make the printing process easier with its forthcoming desktop scanner. Of course, MakerBot’s position as a high-profile purveyor of 3D printing wares has reportedly made it an attractive target for a potential acquisition, with Minnesota/Israel-based Stratasys and even Amazon (which just recently opened a 3D printer section) being pegged as potential purchasers.

MakerBot’s ebullient founder Bre Pettis was keen to downplay that acquisition chatter, as he cut the ceremonial ribbon at the factory’s grand opening (using a partially 3D printed pair of scissors, naturally), but he did later note that they weren’t going anywhere. But while those conversations continue behind closed doors, the roughly 100 employees at MakerBot’s new Brooklyn outpost will continue assembling those printers by hand for a while to come — why not take a look and see what they’re up to?

By now we’ve heard most of what the big three have had to say. Nintendo is holding the line with the Wii U, Microsoft has announced an always-on box for $499, and Sony has made nice with gamers by offering a $399 device that allows users to share and sell games. All of the consoles are HD, all of them support multi-player, and the console wars are essentially over. Each console is a permutation of a high-end PC and each console should have a life-cycle of about seven years, give or take, until 4K becomes interesting then the new console generation will pop onto the scene.

It is, as the Lion King says, the circle of life.

Sadly, however, I think older gamers are finally seeing through the console ruse. To be clear, every console from each manufacturer will sell in the millions. There will be lines around the block at Best Buys across the nation come November as holiday buyers rush for the Xbox One and further lines when the PS4 launches. Nintendo’s top-flight franchises will sell out and the Wii U, while seemingly disappointing, will still sell kids just coming up in the gaming world and to nostalgic adults. In that way, no one can “win” E3 – no matter what the memes say.

So what’s next for gaming? It’s clearly not “casual consoles” like the Ouya nor is it Zynga’s brand of crack gaming that fails when the addicts lose interest. What, then, constitutes the future?

Mobile Gaming?

The phone has to, at some point, replace the handheld console and give the home console a run for its money. Mobile games are addictive but non of them offer the depth and complexity of a game that requires concentration and a stronger control system. There is a reason RPGs and other “deep” games work well using keyboards and, to a degree, controllers: the medium is separated from the message of the game. Games like Kingdom Rush and Angry Birds rely on the device and are, in a way, wedded to it. More complex games are wedded to a passive screen that we control using hand motions that are completely divorced from the actual game play.

This is not to say that mobile gaming can’t create rich worlds. It’s just far harder. It’s not difficult to grab a mobile gamer’s attention for a long time – games like Civilization Revolution are a testament to that – but the interface doesn’t lend itself to long, complex adventures like Oblivion or Bioshock. Once the hardware and software reach parity, however, I could definitely see something in that vein. While console makers aren’t quite ignoring this, Nintendo (and others) could be leaving money on the table by not developing for mobile platforms.

Oculus Rift?

Products like the Oculus Rift are examples of true innovation in gaming. I’ve tried the developer kit and while it is far from complete or even particularly compelling, it does bode well for an immersive future. It is obviously a gimmick, just as the Kinect was before it, but it adds a great deal to the gameplay experience and I could see a day when a headset could augment the gaming experience considerably.

But the future cannot be all headsets and multi-dimensional treadmills. The future has to be filled with compelling content created for a wide audience, something that blockbuster games makers are increasingly afraid to attempt. LEGO City Undercover and Bioshock Infinite are both recent examples of some of the best – and worst – habits of game makers. The LEGO title has all of the fun of a Pixar kids’ movie mixed in with a compelling (if cute) story. Bioshock Infinite has all of the twists and turns of a good movie and the majesty of a Hudson River School painting. Both of the games are flawed in their own way but, in another sense, both are perfect examples of the genre. Most important, however, is that they could be improved like a gimmick like the Oculus Rift but they do not require it to shine.

The Console Makers?

While I intimated above that none of the “big guys” won E3, Sony and Nintendo, at the very least, captured hearts and minds across the globe. In short, they understand the primary value of the console as a physical media player. Allow me to explain.

Game services like Steam (and, to a degree, OnLive) got one part of the equation right. They understood that gaming is usually a solitary endeavor that takes place on a one-to-one basis between a player and his or her monitor. Microsoft is hoping that this relationship can easily cross over to the console experience, which is untrue. On the console, physical media is important for a few reasons and, while the urgency of these are rapidly diminishing, they still exist in most of the world.

First, physical media is popular because it allows folks without stable Internet (arguably an increasingly small cohort) to play any game, it allows for easy trading and aftermarket sales, and it allows, to a degree, for piracy. These are, whether we like it or not, all important things to consider when creating a living-room-based games console. You can, obviously, attempt to crack a console to play downloaded games but, thus far, the physical media has been the primary vector for piracy and will remain so. Not every gamer lives in the U.S. where games aren’t amazingly expensive and so there is far more of an impetus to pirate than any of the big three let on.

When you have both parts of the equation correct – the DLC for solitary, more mature gaming and the physical media for a more price-sensitive market – you win. When you fail to address both sides you fail. Microsoft will probably rejigger its strategy shortly to concede to the mass of gamers who are outraged or it can ignore the complaints and just go for a more mature, less-price-sensitive gamer who doesn’t take his or her disks to a friend’s house to play.

Why does this matter to a non-gamer? First, consoles and the attendant applications drive the direction of in-home media. The PS2 drove DVD adoption just as the PS3 drove Blu-ray (for a while). Consoles are streaming video, allowing for interactive chat sessions, and encouraging us to upgrade our televisions. Gaming is an industry, not a business, and millions of people world-wide are shaped by its tribulations and triumphs.

Gaming is great. For all their complaints, the game-playing masses are still investing time and energy into some amazing titles and games are becoming increasingly more immersive, exciting, and artistic. To say any one console “won” E3 is to ignore the up-and-coming technologies that will make our twitch-fests more interactive and the older players who, by now, are the interactive equivalents of the movie studios of old. Gamers love to whine, but when the pre-order button lights up or its time to queue around the GameStop there is little that can hold them back. The giants at E3 know this implicitly and while no business is guaranteed, there is more than enough precedent to point to a bright and fascinating future.

[Oculus Rift photo via hortont]

Today is the big day. The era of iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, the Mac Pro is upon us, even if we won’t actually enjoy these wonderful wares for another few months.

That said, we’ve switched things up a bit and decided to do an extra, non-Friday TC Gadgets podcast to discuss how fundamentally all of our lives have changed.

This week, the podcast features John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, and Romain Dillet. But if you listen closely, and pray hard enough, you may be able to hear the faint whisperings of a French Siri in the background.

Enjoy, and happy Monday!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

While Apple touted selling a cumulative 600 million devices, their numbers will inevitably draw comparisons to the figures that Google shared last month at developer conference I/O. At that point, Google said that it had seen 900 million devices activated.

What’s clear — whichever way you cut it — is that Android is leading the market in terms of device share. Yet the picture is far more complex when you slice it by share of profits, or by time spent in apps.

This is one angle that Apple tried to play up today at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The company said that iPhone users are 50 percent more engaged by time on their devices than Android users.

They also cited a J.D. Power survey saying that that iOS users were far more satisfied than owners of Android or Windows Phone devices.

The issue, though, and a partial reason for the 23 percent decline in Apple shares over the past year, is whether Samsung-made Android devices are starting to eat into, or at least slow, Apple’s share of the high-end handset market. At the same time, Android is now taking a decisive lead in emerging markets like China, which has just become the world’s largest smartphone market in the last six months.

For now, Apple still holds the lead in profits and time spent in apps. But the concern is that the raw number of devices in circulation may be a harbinger of what’s to come.

Today at WWDC, Apple updated the MacBook Air to give it a boost. VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller insisted on one of its main feature, its battery. The 13-inch now has 12 hours of battery life while the 11-inch is supposed to last 9 hours.

“You can watch almost the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy,” Schiller said.

The MacBook Air now boasts a new Intel Haswell CPU, a 40 percent faster GPU and twice the “GPU execution units.” The entry 11-inch and 13-inch models have the same $999 and $1,199 price tags. The faster $1,399 13-inch model now costs $1,299. Apple hasn’t specified which CPU will ship with those new MacBook Airs yet. It’s available today, so Apple’s website should have this information after the keynote.

Update: Apple’s website is now up to date, and sadly the new MacBook Air now comes with a Core i5 1.3 GHz across the board. Haswell CPUs are more efficient, especially for graphics performances. A dedicated GPU is now almost redundant for casual web surfing and office usage. It could explain the great battery performance while we await some benchmarks.

The flash memory was updated as well to be faster. The MacBook Air is compatible with the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. As a reminder, Apple’s “netbook” latest update was unveiled at last year’s WWDC.