The gaming industry does bond together, at least enough to fight against the most horrible attempts of abuse. Look at the DRM fiasco which surrounded the Xbox One. I'm pretty sure gamers from all camps protested against Microsoft.

Sure taking away local hosting sucks, but is it really that important. For some it is but for most ( Including most PC gamers ) it really isn't. Sure paid Online is a horrible practice but ounce again for most it really isn't such a big deal.

Who do you think split the community up in the first place?

It's only when the corportations lose control from being so anticonsumer that community unification occurs.

That, I'm honestly not quite sure of.  I think Ps2 to Ps3 you had a ridiculous level of Sony gloating, that quickly turned into either retreating into their respective groups.  And Xbox to 360 produced basically the opposite effect, lots of people gloating about Sony's troubles, and vice versa this gen.  And then Nintendo also has some pretty rabid fans, and then on the outside looking in I'd say you had PC gamer's who always knew their platform had the most potential, but saw dev interest eroded over time due to the ability of monetizing closed networks (I really don't for a second believe that piracy had anything to do with it, but was a convenient scapegoat, could be wrong, but that's just how I feel).  I don't actually recall what kind of initial reception the PS1 was getting before launch.  I do know that I switched from Nintendo to Sony that gen (FFVII, and it was my first game on the platform), but, I'm not sure about that.  I don't think I was paying nearly as much attention to the gaming 'news' as I have since.

By and large, I think every group shares the blame in this, it's not really as easy as pointing at one side or the other, it's that whenever you're on top, or the bottom, a large chunk of people will use that as a point of emphasis in discussions.

It becomes clear when you look over a larger timeline and from the perspective of cost and benefit.

While the benefits for gamers are debatable, the benefits for games media and corporations are very clear.

Veterans can attest that pre 5th generation, Gaming companies where much more agressive in their media, "Blast Processing, Nintendont, etc..."

Gamers where younger than and all of this brewed up till the internet released all of this crap all over the internet.

A side effect is that the gaming companies are held accountable, and thus can't be as direct, 

thus gaming journalism, which recently dumped the excess baggage of "ethics", is picking up the slack of coaxing the flame wars.

I mean yesterday, I read an article titled "Xbox Just Signed PlayStation’s Death Warrant courtesy of fcking Zerg.net, I mean if that's not divisive I don't know what is.

I mean sure gamers have a vested intrest, popularity determines future support of games they love, I'd wager the money is a bigger reason.

Absolutely agree that the media has really really helped fan the flames in this, injecting at every possible opportunity some bait-y invective designed purely to stoke flames in threads/forums/comments.