War, war never changes

"War. War never changes.
Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything: from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage." - Ron Perlman Fallout 3 intro.

Ah war, in this case I am talking about the quickest way to an argument on the internet, The Console War. It can be quite a fickle conversation thing. If you are a gamer of any sense of the word you know of this war. It has raged on since the early days of Sega and Nintendo, even before, and has escalated to epic proportions of the Sony and Microsoft fanboys and fangirls. I have generally stayed quiet over this "war" and keep to myself whenever this discussion is brought up, but a recent conversation at work shed some light that I am not alone. Others mirror my feelings towards this mess but are afraid to voice out. Here is my thought on the matter: Video games are great, competition is fantastic, the console war is incredibly stupid.

But why? Why do I think competition is good, but the console wars are hot air thrown in the wind?

Competition is great because it makes sure that there is constant refreshing of ideas and encourages new ideas to be brought out. Imagine if there was only one place that you could get gas from. They could charge however much they wanted and give the crappiest gas but because they are the only gas station around, you have to keep going there and buying from them. It isn't until competition is thrown in that better gas, lower prices get thrown into the mix. Now of course, you don't have to buy games (hahahahaha), like gas but the analogy remains the same, if only Sony was around or only Microsoft they could do nothing but spit out 1 game year after and never improve.

But beyond that, for me it's not so much the companies that I feel anger towards in the "console war"(although with the past couple of E3's I felt there was a real lack of decorum at some points on both side of the equation), but more of the rage and lack of civilized discussion. Go ahead, I challenge you right now go to any sort of gaming news website and look for a story based on one of the consoles, or a game specific to a console. Read through the comments and I can pretty much guarantee there will be a couple of comments about how "xyz console sucks" or something about a fanboy/fangirl. Now granted it does seem to be getting better, but there is still a lot of hostility out there. Why can't someone just like one system over the other without being harassed about it, or without forcing their opinion on it as well.

I play mainly Xbox. It's not because I think Microsoft is better than Sony, I have more friends who play on Xbox with me then I do on the Playstation. I had both a Xbox 360 and PS3, but I got the PS3 first. When I got the PS3 I had a lot of friends who were on it so we played a lot of games together. After a while I had less friends playing games on the PS3 and more on the Xbox so I ended up switching. I still like the Playstation and have a few really good games for it, but I have more friends to play with on the other console.

Essentially what I am saying is like what you want to like, you should be able to have a civil discussion on why you like one console over the other without being attacked or told you're wrong. People are going to like what they like, do your part and don't be a jerk either. Respect others preferences and carry a conversation like a human being.

This blog is absolutely a safe place. I encourage discussion here. What console do you prefer? Why is that your preference? Have you tried the other one and if so, what caused you not to like it? These are things WORTH talking about.

-Ender