The gaming industry is growing stronger and stronger by the year and the need for better, diverse and deeper experiences is growing too. Developers and publishers alike are dueling to create new and interesting IPs as fast as they can, with a heap of remakes and remasters largely filling the void to tie gamers over in the meantime. It’s a great time to be a gamer, that much has to be said. Yet despite this, the console war continues to rage on. In the midst of all of this innovation, conversations still seem to revolve around who owns what hardware and for what reason they shouldn’t own it. The fact of the matter is this, we all do the same thing and we all play games because we love them, so why all the hate?
People of my fine age will have gamed on either (or both) SEGA and Nintendo platforms, but yet again, conversations largely consists of which platform houses the better mascot. I myself owned the Mega Drive whereas my brother owned the SNES, so I was fortunate enough to enjoy both Sonic and Mario, as well as each console exclusive titles. Gaming back then was much less evolved, not just in terms of technology, but in terms of reach. I don’t recall much animosity at all when I was growing up with games. Though today, we see people fighting, people sending death threats, hell, even people getting hurt in some rare cases. It’s gone way too far. Social media certainly doesn’t help. It’s far too easy now to sit behind a keyboard and spam groups with hate and nonsense.
This behavior isn’t healthy for either the consumer nor the brand, in fact it just makes haters look more like tits by the day. It’d be nice, especially with the ongoing traction of cross-play functionality picking up, for everyone to get along, regardless as to whether they game on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, PC or anything in between. Let’s take Far Cry 5 for example, purely because I’m playing it at the moment. Do you know what followed on from that initial reveal trailer? Comparison videos; which platform can push the performance to the highest quality, which platform makes the game look better and so on and so forth. Does it really matter that much? I’m playing on the base Xbox One and the game looks stunning.
I really cannot see why there needs to be so much finger pointing. Sure, it’s nice for consoles to have exclusive titles. Competition is never a bad thing, it keeps competitors on their toes, which is only good for us, the consumer. Though again, far too often do we see more discussion regarding its exclusivity, rather than the experience itself. I’m not saying this behavior is one sided, it’s not. Fans of all platforms are guilty of this. It doesn’t do anyone any favors in the slightest. The fact that the game is exclusive is enough to entice people into buying the platform if they desire it that much, we don’t need all of this hate in a world that’s already chock-full of it. It’s unnecessary and does very little to bolster either the game itself or the platform it runs on.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that as a collective, as a gamer first and foremost, we all need to come together and get behind one another. This is a passion we all share, so why cant we share it in unity once and for all? The industry is moving forward and we should all be behind developers, large and small, supporting them to continue to innovate and create. Will any of this make the slightest bit of difference? It’s unlikely, but I would like to at least see that people acknowledge this same concern. The community console war needs to come to an end once and for all. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Is there anything you would like to add? Sound off in the comments below. We don’t bite!
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