An Open Letter to Fanboys

[Dark Jaguar]

Indeed... You know, I think we all had a phase like that at some point. Basically, your parents buy you one, ONE game system for Christmas and won't get you a new one for many years to come, so you better pick wisely! Once you make that choice and can't go back, well, you defend it in the most childish way possible, by assigning the designation of "evil" to the other company, delighting in every single bad thing you can see and just pretending the good stuff doesn't exist. You completely forget the fact that BEFORE Christmas rolled around you were in termoil over the decision because it really was close at the time :D. Of course, the fanboy wars start the second you find someone who picked the "other one". I think this is unique to game consoles, because of the oddity of the market. Namely, whatever company's system you buy from, that limits what extra entertainment you can get. There are similar things, but only stuff regarding gadgets. You won't find people doing that with books. You want a book by another author, just buy it. No need to buy the special interpreter. You want a movie by some other movie producer, you just get it, that's standardized so one player plays it all until a new standardized format comes out. Same with music and TV and all the rest, EXCEPT GAMES! For all the problems the game companies say may be happening to the game market, the only one they refuse to acknowledge is the possibility that this sort of segregation MAY be preventing a large number of potential consumers from joining in. Thing is, it's hard to really standardize the gaming market. Perhaps all the companies could gather together and form a little group to decide exactly what the next gen should be able to do and agree that all the systems they make, which may look different or have extra features on top of that, not graphics related but like ipod support or something, fit those basic hardware standards so all games are playable on all systems. From there it's just a matter of trying to sell on extra features, and we as gamers just have to buy one system. We may end up buying a lot of special controllers though :D.

But no, that'll never happen.