BY JASON MONROE: I tend to use the lull before the festive season hits full swing to catch-up on my backlog, getting through as many of the unplayed and unfinished titles that I can before my time is swallowed up by mince pies and beer. Life is good.
What has struck me when looking at the ridiculous number of games I have to play is how many of them aren’t new experiences at all.
Phantom Knight provides his thoughts on the futility of Console Wars.
Humans are competitive by nature, in life there’s winner and losers.
Console wars don’t hurt the industry.
I actually think the companies behind the systems encourage it too, as it drives brand loyalty, which in turn drives sales. It's definitely played up, but it turns what would normally be just another boring business rivalry into something people actually get drawn into.
On the company level though, it's often seen as corporate ribbing and not to be taken seriously. the heads of these platforms have respect for each other. The fans, however... not so much. They take everything seriously when in reality we are all in the same hobby for the same reason. We like to play video games. Can't we all just play along?
@darthv72
If you follow sports, this is normal.
Just search an argument of Jordan VS Lebron
2pacalypsenow
Sports has athletes representing nations, cities or communities ect, consoles are aimed for personal entertainment, a better comparison would be something like music.
Of course they encourage it. Big companies know exactly how people will react every time one of their execs get up on a stage, do an interview or tweet something. Everything is pre-calculated and deliberate. They know that engagement with their brand, good or bad is still engagement. Fan rivalry is an integral part of any entertainment business. This is fact, this is human nature.
Everyone has a team they root for , I don't see why having a preferred console should be any different.
“Console wars don’t hurt the industry.”
I agree. It’s just the most loyal fans having a go at it. Nothing wrong with that.
These are your biggest supporters which is a good thing. Some may go a bit overboard in defending their brand but you just have to look over those.
Those "loyal fans" are usually the one's who will disagree with a known fact that is also easy to look up and you think that there is nothing wrong with that lmao
To a certain extent its fine when it's kind of loose banter. I enjoy the debates and arguments but it doesnt take much for it to descend way beyond that. Console wars can hurt the industry when people take things too far.
Generally though, I do enjoy the banter and it's a good way to pass the time at work etc. But these things often go WAY past that
Jin
These are the fans who are buying consoles day one at full price so yes to these companies the core gamers matter especially early on
@Kiwi66
It’s 2020, facts don’t matter anymore, it’s all about someone feelings.
I think they help spread misinformation. But the "wars" themselves are used as a marketing device nowadays. Side effect of the social media age.
it will never die. It's not much of a war when Sony has won 3/4 of it's gens in historic fashion.
@TheEnigma313
It is war when there´s competition, when comes to console.
You can downplay competitors and say there´s no competition at all.
Until, of course, you hear the word "exclusive" from the other side. Then if you somehow felt unconfortable in any way, that´s when you´ll realize that competition exist, whether you like it or not.
Replies(1)I think this gen there is more warring going on than last. Seems like the vitriol is at an all time high.
Whether that has any effect on anything I won't say, because I think there would be a lot more than internet banter to have a major effect on the overall console industry.
Nintendo atari sega were all once in the dedicated home console race, them 3 are the og's and none of them make home consoles anymore, Sony and microsoft killed them all and nintendo's case they ran off to their handheld market because they could not keep up with the big 2 in the dedicated home console business. Ill continue to support the big 2 as long as i can.
Eh. Pretty sure Wii blew away everyone else that generation. Just because Nintendo pulled a Nintendo and made hardware vastly different to what else is out there, that doesn't mean they were pushed out of the console business lol. Nintendo has been around for decades. I don't think looking at the last 7 years or so speaks for the company as a whole.
Atari... their thing was against Coleco and Mattel. when they tried to come back against Sega and Nintendo they were pretty much ignored. Just like NEC, who was the real competitor of Sega and Nintendo at the time. All platforms are competitors because each company is vying for the consumers $$. Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, Mattel, Panasonic (3do), NEC, SNK and Sega were all once competition to each other. Only Nintendo has survived and keeps on trucking with new competition from MS and Sony. And that is just the ones that were in NA and JP. In EU you had others like Amstrad, Konica and others I cant recall.
NEC could have been a real force in the industry if they had any sense of how to market their console outside japan. Had tons of support, and a great system. Having Hudson backing was a big thing back in the day, as it was the only big 3rd party partnership for hardware with a console maker in console history.
Sega was eventually it's own worst enemy, and made a lot of bad business decisions. Sony just offered up a new and better paradigm for the industry. Nintendo was too stubborn with their hardware, which caused them to fall behind.
MS really didnt have much effect on any of the consoles pre-ps1. Nintendo was already having issues getting people to buy, and sega was already out when MS came in. If sega hadn't left, chances are, MS wouldnt have gone ahead with the xbox.
Gaming desktops are usually either big and heavy full-size beasts, or else miniaturized boxes that lack the power to impress. And whether you buy a complete system or an empty chassis to fill with components, they're often on the fugly side.
Deville Louw put together a list of 10 memorable and sometimes very difficult video game boss encounters. Do you remember these?
Most of the games listed span more than two decades. Why even add that in the title?
There's a lot more bosses that were memorable than just this list. Tough to narrow it down to just 10.
Are you okay? The most of them are from games that were released over 20 years ago.
That first boss fight in God of War was totally Legendary. I felt like it was a last boss fight.
Truly one of the best boss fights I ever played in a game.
Psycho Mantis fight also was Legendary.
I love them when done well, and let me give you a few examples why.
Was crazy hyped for Dragon's Dogma when it was announced, it was doing so many cool things ive wanted to see in an RPG forever. I pre-order, it comes out, and it's very blurry and screen-tear central. Usually im the last guy to complain about things like resolutions, framerates and AA. But the way they did it here actually made my eyes hurt (eye strain) meaning i couldn'tplay it fir more than 30mins beforei got a migraine, not worth it, and it got permanently shelved. Then here comes the remaster fixing those issues and im finally able to enjoy this amazing gem putting iver 100hrs into it so far.
Really love corney yet fun games, through that interest i came across Metal Wolf Chaos which really tickles my pickle. Issue is a copy cost almost $200 and i wasnt going to pay that. Here comes the remaster and now i can bathe in this gloriously bad voice acted masterpiece for only $30, and i love it.
Then there's OKAMI, a game ive always wanted but could never track down a copy, even tried buying it online (which i really hate doing for older used games) and both times i tried the discs didnt work, one had a very small crack on the edge that just enough to kill it, the ither was a victim of premature disc rot due to poor storage. Finally track down a copy for the wii but as i got home THAT DAY i read the announcement for the PS4 remaster. And for $30 i got to play easily one of the best games ive ever played in it's best possible forms and damn am i glad it was remastered cause it made a world of difference to the art especially in HDR.
How would the industry benefit at all if they didn’t exist? If you don’t like them don’t play them