Neil Thompson, Microsoft's regional director of Xbox in the UK, has emphasized the need for the videogame industry to impress upon parents that consoles and videogames have grown far beyond what they were in the past.

Thompson, who is also a member of ELSPA, lamented that a lot of parents still treat consoles and videogames as "kids' toys." Age ratings and content filters are just a couple of the ways they're employing to wean parents off of this erroneous thinking.

"As a platform holder we take our responsibility of enabling parents to make the right decisions for their children very seriously. This is why we build technologies into the platform that allow parents to switch content on or off as well as allowing them to control the amount of time the products can be used," said Thompson in an interview with MCV.

"The key for us is to make the setting of these controls very easy and ensure we’re also playing a leading role in publicizing age ratings and their importance to parents and retailers alike. Every responsible member of the video games industry needs to step up and play as active a role as we can to keep this education process front of mind. It’s ELSPA’s job to corral the industry around this agenda and ensure we’re all doing everything we can reasonably do.”

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