Hello I was wondering my fellow Grouvee members if you still think the console war is going on or if you think it is over?
It would be nice if it was, but as long as a percentage of people think of brands are synonymous with their personal identity, it will probably rage on. Some people really need regular confirmation that the brand of item they bought is “the right one” and one way to do that is to diminish the value of other brands to perceptually inflate the sense of quality, importance, value of the chosen brand. So instead of recognizing platforms as merely a means to access the things we love, like games, people attribute arbitrary value to their platform of choice, and then they defend that position like they would defend a loved one. People forget that brands are not our friends, not our family, and that they are corporations with the only priority of earning revenue to turn a profit. The sooner people can divorce their personal sense of self worth from the objects they own, the easier that will be to see. But we have over a century of capitalist ideology that reinforces the connection between self value and the value of the things we own, so it can be tough to deconstruct or dismantle.
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I agree with @BMO. Anecdotally, I don’t feel that same fervor for console warring that I did in the GameCube/Xbox/PS2 era, but I think that has a lot to do with me growing up and exiting the crowds who were participating in that war.
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100% this. If you circulate among people who don’t care which console someone plays on, you might think the war is over. But if you visit the right places on the internet you see the same dumb arguments that are decades old still going strong. And then it extends to a lot of other tech too from what phone you use to what computer you buy. And yet they are all just tools and it doesn’t matter what someone else uses.
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The console wars to me now is basilcally “I prefer Nintendo games” versus “I don’t care if I don’t play Nintendo games.” I just don’t see enough of a difference between the others to warrant anything beyond ambivalence, unless you really care about the handful of exclusives and performance specs. Which I personally do not.
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The consoles are certainly still competing against each other, since the companies behind them are trying to gain as much profit as possible.
If the question is just “are there still nerds who are loyal to one specific brand and/or like to make fun of other competing brands” then yes, that’s most definitely a thing and likely always will be. Some people seem to make that their entire personality lol.
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There’s still a “war” in so much as they’re all competing, but their approach seems to be splitting.
PS4 still want to be seen as the premium brand, with the most powerful console and shinier games.
Xbox just wants you to subscribe to their rent-a-game service.
Nintendo wants to focus on being the family friendly party console that survives on consistently pumping out new versions of their existing IP, surviving on the many games you can only play on their hardware, regardless whether they would look better on the other’s hardware or not.
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Although competition can be seen as a form of war, I’ve always considered “the console wars” to refer to the consumer/gamer level war over brand superiority. Now, of course the brands fed that especially in the 90s and noughties, with advertising geared toward declaring the other platform as inferior. But even though they still take hits at each other, and are still competing as platform rivals and rival brands, I do think that it’s the ground “culture” war perpetuated by the fans of the brands that continue to shape and define what exactly is meant by “console wars” because even as MS has admitted losing the hardware war and has moved on to attempt to shift the conversation away from hardware, we still have Xbox, PS and Nintendo fans fighting tooth and nail over which console is the best.
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Yeah I think so, although I also think the PC will eventually replace a good portion of console gaming, and eventually the market will only present two options, PC and Nintendo. I don’t think we’ll get up to, say, for example, an Xbox 10 and PS10. I don’t think just to give one more thought, that new Xbox consoles can even compete with the original Xbox console. Also, the PC is clearly the best choice for gaming today, and that’s just my thoughts.
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As someone who grew up with the Atari2600 and eventually PS2 and 3, I migrated entirely to Steam until Quest entered my realm. It would seem to me VR hardware will be where the battle will continue. Other gaming consoles are in a Cold War paradigm otherwise.
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As a person who increasingly plays on PC, I still there is a market for a console that’s more powerful than whatever Nintendo currently has on offer. Not everyone wants to build a PC, and consoles like PS5/Series X provide a great deal of value for your money for a turnkey system. There are still a lot of people that want to turn on a device and not worry about configuration settings or troubleshooting software issue. And people want a system you turn on and that works with a controller without need of additional input. Even though I built my PC to be a console there are still limits to ease of use. I’m comfortable with that but many people aren’t. I don’t see Pc replacing consoles. I do see cloud platforms replacing local hardware in the long run, for better or worse.
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Interesting how the console wars will change if Microsoft just becomes a developer.
Maybe. We’ll see what they announce next week.
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I’ve been playing a few older games lately on an original Xbox. It still is enjoyable for me to play some games on consoles in a more comfortable chair with a controller rather than always playing on a PC. But I just haven’t been very impressed with many of the new console game releases over the past 7 years or so and think the PC offers a more robust and complete experience with so many game choices on Steam.
But I do have a question, how is backwards compatibility for the new consoles? I think one thing that could make the console wars more competitive is with a robust backwards compatibility system and more remakes and updates of older classics.
I will most likely eventually purchase another console once the next generation is available.
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In a dream world I think of how amazing it would be if both xbox and playstation did the following. Made disk attachable disc drives that could play all there previous games!!!
I think the golden age of the console wars was the sega-nintendo wars. Though the one place I think the console wars will always live on will be in nostalgia.
Personally I don’t have any nostalgia for it even though I lived through what could be considered multiple different console wars. I really don’t think there is anything positive to take away from the psychology of the console wars.
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