this is certainly true, but the way games are perceived does matter. if they were to be accepted as a serious art form, game would go a radically different way in the future than if they continue to be made purely for entertainment.

From what I have read in this thread, as with every other thread I have read on the topic, the discussion pretty much pivots on which definition of art is accepted/used by each person. If a person interprets art broadly, such that something is 'art' if it elicits emotion in the viewer, then one can conclude that many, if not all, video games are art. However, if one defines 'art' more narrowly, perhaps by requiring it to be created towards that express purpose (and not primarily toward entertainment, for instance), then it becomes far more difficult to say that a video game is art.
For this reason, I don't think this is a huge issue. Why does it matter if not everyone thinks that a video game can be art? Why should the reverse matter to Ebert? I believe a video game is what you want it to be, in terms of your own experience. If thinking of a video game as art (or not, as the case may be) enriches one's enjoyment of the video game, I don't see any harm. It is not as if we can only have fun by consensus; and that is all a video game is to me, a diversion that is fun.
For myself, I agree with Mentalepsy:

Fair enough, but don't the two go hand in hand? The audience has to be receptive to (for lack of a better adjective) artistic games before they really stake out significant territory in the gaming world, but part of cultivating that receptivity is creating those artistic games in the first place; the medium's only going to grow if its participants are challenged.
I don't know that the gaming public is any less willing to accept intelligent or artistic entries of their medium than the moviegoing public is of theirs; in both groups, you've got the more devoted members who take the medium seriously as a hobby and a form of expression, as well as those who just consider it a distraction, and of course, in the movie industry the hollow distractions are still typically the big sellers.
The biggest difference I think is that movies are much more pervasive than games. Everyone's had the experience of watching a great movie (or at least, a movie that was great to them), but a lot of people have never touched a computer game at all, let alone an "artistic" one. My parents are not gamers, and they think that Megaman is about as deep as video games get; I'll never convince them otherwise, nor am I going to try, but they're not the ones who are driving development.
You could argue of course that the perception of games as childish diversions is why large swathes of the public simply ignore them, but games are a new medium; that might not change until we've got several generations of adults who grew up gaming and have experienced what games can really offer.

No, video games are ponies. And we all know what that means.

i think this may be because of the barrier to entry to gaming. most of us gamers started when we were little kids or are naturally curious enough to persevere past the first hour to the point where control comes easily, but most non-gamers will not be motivated to play past the first ten minutes (during which they suck) because they have never seen how rewarding a game can be once you understand it.
it's not because playing games is nerdy. if people like something enough it gets assimilated into pop culture. in fact, we are even seeing that right now with gaming. the problem is that games aren't as lazily easy to get into as TV or movies.
EDIT: that wasn't really a direct reply, i'm just going off on a tangent

this is my generation for sure. we're graduating in a few years, hold tight.

True, we'll be flooded by pretentious crap and then "art analysts" will come help us interpret what that crap meant.

Some games are art. But that is merely my definition of art and games deserving the title.

art is cool. yuppies suck.

Depends. People say it's art if they intentionally make it as art but then I wonder if dumping a load of jelly into a museum is art just because they call it art for art's sake.
But despite all this debate, no, we shouldn't care. Like art, or film, people should draw their own conclusions as to whether the game they are playing is artistic or not. Gameplay affects different people in different ways.