Qtions Blog: Your place for The Top 5

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Top5 Reasons This Is A Harsh Console War

A largely debated topic since the beginning of the conole war has been--why is there a console war at all? Well there really is a lot of hate floating around, and it is coming from all the systems. People are trolling and pointlessly arguing. I have decided to list the top 5 reasons this has been a harsh console war and will continue to be.

#5) Video Games Growing Popularity

When video games were first release we really didn't see such a divide in fans. The divide was there, just not as much. With video games ever growing popularity though, it has become almost a ritual to support one side of the fence or the other. This may be due to a mass amount of people who now play video games.If you were to throw two people in a ring who completely hated each other-- one guy likes Sony and the other guy likes Nintendo-- they probably will begin to dislike the other persons favorite company, that is just how it works. So with more people you get more hate.

#4) Different Types Of Systems

Today is a lot different with consoles, instead of just really two main companies--you have 3. If you look back to the late 80's - early 90's, the main two companies were Sega and Nintend. Then in the mid 90's - late 90's it was Nintendo and Sony, although Sega was there they were in serious decline. Then for a few years it was kind of dominance by only Sony, 2000-2002. Then we suddenly had Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all in a console battle, the exception here though is that Nintendo and Microsoft were playing catch-up and it never really became a contest. Now though, all three consoles were released within a year of each other roughly. This in turn has made no large gap in sales and little time to make a decisions. Now though we have the Wii which is such a different style of play which attracts different people, then we have a Xbox360 which attracts the people looking for the in-between experience with good online play, and finally we have a PS3 which offers a great high-definition experience and hardcore gameplay. When you have 3 different types of gaming you will normally get people choosing that one category and defending it, normally leading to arguments.


#3) The Internet? :O

Yes, that is right. I believe the internet has spun this console race into a war. Back when there was the NES the internet was used so little that no one could express the way they felt, and up until 10 years ago it would have been hard to find the message boards filling with information about the console war like they do today. If there is one thing that communities and forum boards do it is that they make people post their feelings. One disagreement on a forum board can lead to a never ending flame war, people 20 years ago wouldn't have the first clue as to what you were talking about if you claimed you had a flame war.

#2) Fan Boys

Today is a different type of console war, people go out of their ways to put on t-shirts or dress up as their favorite game character to show what team they are for. People are prowling forum boards telling everyone how great their console is and how bad the others are... just to show who they support. Put your frikken favorite console in your forum signature and forget posting, posting leads to flame wars and useless arguing. What does anyone else care what console you support anyways, I mean seriously--why should your opinion make anyone elses any different?

#1) Competition

The competition these consoles have brought to the table takes me back to the early 90's when Sega and Nintendo were battling it out. At this point in the console war any console still has a legitimate chance at winning the battle, all of the consoles are still fairly close. The closer the competition the more likely you are to argue over what console should win, who will lose, and what the better console is. Having said that, I think that these posts are important to the console race and that we need these kind of posts without the negative.








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