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+--- Thread: Console Wars (/showthread.php?tid=5667)
Console Wars - Great Rumbler - 16th April 2010
All gamers go through a phase where it's "Us" versus "Them". You're favored gaming company or hardware against their favored gaming company or hardware. Arguments are waged and lines drawn. Members are quickly drafted, taught the rules, and then thrust into the middle of that hellish firestorm that is forum debate. The goal of all this is to "win", with winning meaning the eventual admittance of defeat by the other side. The only problem is that there never is any victory because the rules are constantly changing. What might be touted by one side can be quickly swept away following a decision by that side's company of choice to take things in a different direction. In a word: pointless.
The argument might be made that console wars are no different than sports. One side wants their group to win and the other side wants their group to win. There the similarities end. In the game industry, both sides can win because, while the two are competing with each other, the is enough room for both to flourish and make profits. This forces the console warriors to adopt increasingly obscure determinations of victory. Another problem is that there are no official rules to determine who wins. It's up to the warriors to figure that one out and both sides have different ides of what constitutes victory. To further distance itself from the sports analogy, each team in sports offers virtually the same experience. Both teams are playing the same sport. That's not entirely the case with game companies. Each company may offer a very different experience and that experience is readily available in all territories. One company might excel in RPGs, while another excels in platforming titles. Very different experiences. While there might be gamers who chose one over the other, many gamers will play and enjoy both.
Therein lies the problem with console warriors: they miss out. If you're a true console warrior, you'll stick to your console of choice and ignore the others. By doing that, the console warrior knowingly cut himself off from a supply of quality entertainment all because he, or she, wants to win an online battle, which, as stated before, will never actually ever be won.
Why then do we fight? Validation, simply put. We want to convince ourself, and others, that we made the right choice by picking one console over the other. Every time the other console loses an exclusive or sells poorly, it's a victory for us because it gives us one more notch in our belt. It's not about playing and enjoying games, it's about posturing, about back-patting, but without the eventual championship victory of your favorite sports team.
http://greatrumbler.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/culture-talk-console-warriors/
Console Wars - EdenMaster - 16th April 2010
You forgot to mention other crucial aspects, like secret pages on websites that everyone knew about.
Console Wars - A Black Falcon - 16th April 2010
You also didn't mention that one of the major reasons for it is that consoles are expensive, so lots of people can't afford or don't want to spend the large amounts of money to own multiple current-gen consoles, whichever generation you're talking about...
As gamers have gotten steadily older on average this could potentially have gotten less of an issue over time, but game and system prices have been going up this generation too, and there's a recession, so not so much.
Seriously, as if it should be surprising that people who have put so much money into something would want it to succeed?
Console Wars - Weltall - 16th April 2010
In total contrast to my views of ten years ago, I would like to end the console wars forever by having there be a single videogame hardware standard and let anyone manufacture the machines. It would be universally compatible with all games and accessories.
It would be awesome for gamers because you wouldn't need to spend fifteen hundred dollars to be able to play every game you want to play. You would also have cheaper games because the royalties system would not exist.
So fuck Sony, fuck Microsoft, and fuck Nintendo for existing at our expense. They're the winners, not us.
Console Wars - Great Rumbler - 16th April 2010
A Black Falcon Wrote:Seriously, as if it should be surprising that people who have put so much money into something would want it to succeed?
To the failure of other consoles? That's the part that's funny.
It's not about which consoles is really better than the other, it's about back-patting and "points".
Console Wars - alien space marine - 16th April 2010
Its all about the challenge of heated debates and the joys of trash talking, It doesn't matter if its over consoles or the best brand of underwear the experience is the same.