Back in 1958 there was a man called William Higinbotham. Higinbotham was a crazy guy with a crazy name but he really liked games in all kind of them. At this time he was called stupid but this man went on with his dreams eventually creating a game that was called "Tennis for two". This was the birth of videogames.
"Tennis for two" was fun of course but it still needed several years to bring videogames to the mainstream. In 1970 Atari – today known for it’s videogame systems – developed the game "Pong".
Pong was easy – you just had to hit a ball when it came to your side of the screen, it was a simple version of tennis.
But this game as simple as it was drove people crazy – cause it was a hell of a lot of fun to play it.
In the 1980´s when most retailers and analysts called videogames a dead phenomenon, Nintendo an old Japanese company brought it’s NES to the market. NES stood for Nintendo Entertainment System and this was exactly what it was about – entertainment. Bundled with the game Super Mario Bros. It soon became a hot seller and people started playing again... cause it was so much fun to jump around with Mario, exploring deep labyrinths in The Legend of Zelda and so scary to travel trough Metroid and beat Mother Brain.
In 1995 Sony launched the Playstation. The games were 3D, they were new, they were amazing – and they were fun. When Sony launched the PS2 everyone got crazy cause it seemed even more fun to play: Better graphics, better games, better entertainment and the PS2 still sells well cause of games like Eye Toy and Singstar which are easy but entertaining.
Why do we play videogames? Is it cause we’re "gangsters?" Is it cause we’re cool? Because of the image? No. There is one thing every gamer wants whatever system he or she owns:
It’s fun.
And this leads me to my question: Why do we have to bash others because they own a different system? Why do we have to start an endless discussion about which console is better?
Do we have to prove – to ourselves? – the system we own is funnier than the others? Look:
Hoppers and Rockers don’t like each other. They say the music the others listen to sucks.
In the past white people didn’t like black skinned persons. They said they were worse than the whites cause they had a different skin color.
In Germany – yes that’s where I from – the Nazis killed millions of Jewish people cause they believed in a different religion.
In this forum some people bash each other cause they prefer different styles of fun.
This may not even nearly seem to be as bad as the other examples I gave – but it’s the same structure of thinking.
Yes, we can be annoyed if someone always posts arguments which are stupid and yes we can be angry if someone calls us "Fanboy" or something, but respect and tolerance should be something everyone should know – in this forum too.
In the end it doesn’t matter whether you listen to Hip Hop or Rock – you listen to music. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white (which is from a Michael Jackson Song... NOW you can bash me 
) or if you’re Christian or Jewish – you know we’re all humans so what? And if we think in small terms it doesn´t matter which system you play – in the end we’re all gamers.
What I saw very often (from me too) in this forum was that people always want to be right and nobody else can be. Of course Kwaad is wrong when he indirectly calls Nintendo fans gamers that don’t play complex games but if you just call him "fanboy" that´s not that good too.
As I said in the end we´re all gamers and we´ve got the same hobby – why can I not play on my Wii but still look forward to the next session Oblivion on my friends 360?
We are no racists right? We don’t care about other people listening to another kind of music and we don’t care about our gender or age here which is something you won’t find that often out there in the "real world". So why can’t we stop criticizing people because of their consoles?
We could really be a great community – in fact we are already but their is still some anger always. We should be here to discuss console sales and such things. Nobody knows what the gaming market will look like in 3 years or so at least not for sure.
Some say this crazy estimates should stop others say the giant love for one specific console should be stopped – well why can’t we stop both?
We´ve got the same hobby we just play on different platforms.
So what do you think? Wouldn´t it be much more fun to visit this site if we could discuss as gamers and not as fans of specific consoles?
I mean: gaming is about fun - why can´t we have fun in this forum too? (note: It is fun to discuss all these things in this forum already and I really like to discuss this things with nearly all of you. So if you feel like I said something harsh to you personally, that´s not what I wanted to say... and once more sorry for ma bad english :p)
