What system is better? None of the above...

[xerostomia]

Well what is interesting is that the internet, and sites like these, do indeed provide a wealth of information that previously was not avaialbel. An obtuse example would be looking for a new car battery. In the past, I would go to the dealer if my car was new, pay them what they wanted, and went merily on my way. If the car was a little older, I would go to Sears/Pepboys etc, hope that there was a sale that week, pay them what they wanted and went merrily on my way. However, with the explosion of the internet, the ease of accessing information, the last time I needed a battery, I did a google search, learned alot about batteries (in that there are only a coulpe of companies that makes them, and subsequently rebadge them for dealers/retailers) and found out the the best batteries were from Walmart/Costco as they were the 'same' as Sears/dealer and for 1/2 the price. There are many discussion boards detailing people experiences, pricing, and plenty of advice. This applies to almost everything these days from car buying to buying video game consoles.

In the past, one would go to BB or retailer, see a 'cool' game, see an occational commertial on that 'cool game' and if lucky visit a friend who had the console, and then decide that I wanted to to buy that console. Very litttle thought on the competitors, the game libraries, the feature sets etc. In this day and age, again with the wealth of information , consumer reports etc, buyers want to be educated, they want to feel that they did thier 'research' and bought the 'best' product and for the 'best' price. This applies to pantyhose or tires, or TV's or gaming.

The problem with gaming consoles is that there is no longer uniformity. There is too much differences between them to the 'casual' and sometimes 'savy' consumer and thus people get confused. Thus they ask 'which console should I buy'. The bottom line is that these people want to be told what to get to help justify their decision. If not, then they would have made the decison already. People have the 'fear' of buying the 'wrong' thing and then regreting the decision. If there were no chatgroups, internet forums, the bias would fall on the retailers and that is not always a good thing. The issue with 'fanboys' is that these people truely have loyalty to thier product, and that is OK, but the 'problem fanboys' are the ones that get pleasure in making others feel bad in their decision making. There is nothing productive in that. Voicing ones opinion I think is perfectly reasonable, but then trying to impose ones views on others is where problems occur.

So far this generation the worst fueds have been between PS3 and Xbox and will likely continue, BUT I really suspect that the real hatred will fall on the Wii at some point as they continue to form market dominance.