Thoughts on...The Console Wars

Since I had planned to have a video game themed week of topics, I figured I could finally talk about something that has been in the news in the last few years and that reignites constantly; the gamer "Console Wars". I will specifically focus on the current competition of PlayStation (Sony) vs XBox )Microsoft), but others like Sega vs Nintendo definitely started the trend.


Source

First I'll give some background and then I'll discuss the current situation. I'm not sure where this term came from but it probably originated from the media, who love to see two companies battle it out for dominance with similar consumers. For whatever reason it also pits the fans of those systems (disparagingly named "fanboys"-though sometimes in a good way) against each other into a pit of name calling and fact-checking. Something that is outside of the "war" are the people who align themselves with the PC Master Race. These are the people that prefer the aspects of PC gaming over anything else. Their argument is that they don't have to spend as much to get a massively powerful system and upgrades are cheap.  I'm more of a Playstation person since I grew up playing Crash, Spyro, Jak and Daxter and Kingdom Hearts but I'm open to getting into Microsoft, I just have to see what kind of games they offer and if their in my interest range and will always prefer a controller over a keyboard since I'm "old-school" in that respect.

Alright, so back when I was in high school, the Xbox360 and PS3 were released. Back then, everyone hated PlayStation due to the high price of the system and other issues. Not sure if it was a result of this, but I knew more people who had XBox over a PS. We didn't get a PS3 (we're strictly a PS family) and plus I was more of a watcher so that probably explains why I never played Uncharted even though it's something I would love. Anyway, it seemed during this generation that Playstation finally lost steam after dominating the previous two generations (with the PS and PS2). Technically neither the PS or the XBox360 were the winners; that award went to the Wii, who dominated with sales of 100 million units (the others fell around 80mil). Eventually Playstation released some solid titles (but no Kingdom Hearts!) and started to up their sales to the point that they are fairly even with Microsoft. So in a nutshell, Sony "lost" this generation by generally getting too cocky and assuming their consumers would just roll over and buy, no matter the price (it also didn't help that blu-ray was brand-new tech that no one knew what to do with yet).

Flashforward to 2013, and everyone is ripe with anticipation for the new consoles to be announced. I'm not sure who came out with information first but I think they were announced around the beginning of the summer convention time (possibly at GamesCon), so all eyes were on both companies at E3. I actually think Microsoft released info about the One earlier than E3 and it caused a huge backlash for a wide variety of reasons, while Sony only said some basic info so that only added to the tension. E3 proved to be a slam dunk with Sony solidly giving the fans what they wanted tech-wise (more specifically what they didn't want with the XBox) and also by teasing some highly anticipated games (Kingdom Hearts 3, anyone?). They even had a hilarious "how to trade games" video that brought lot of laughs and poked fun at Microsoft a bit. Meanwhile Microsoft defended their tech and explained that their version of next-gen would be an all-in-one entertainment system and also talked some cool games. This only sought to make some people even more angry and the months leading up to the release saw the reversal of nearly all of their controversial policies and the stepping down of their higher-ups. All of these events obviously caused huge clashes between those fans on either side all over the Internet.

Currently, both of the systems have had successful releases all over the world. Sony did announce that they sold over 7 million units since Nov 15, which is over double what has been reported by Microsoft. This by no means bodes the end of Microsoft (ex. last gen when they ended up even) as there are still upwards of 10 years between generations. Overall, I feel that no matter which "side" you are on (if any), the consumers win outright by receiving quality products and getting to vote with their wallets to force the company to adapt. I guess time will tell and in the meantime, I will be playing some video games.