The last great console war was fought during the fourth generation between Nintendo's Super Famicom and Sega's Genesis. Much like Microsoft and Sony in this gen, Sega beat Nintendo to the punch and released the Genesis well before Nintendo was ready to release their successor to the NES. When Nintendo finally did push their new machine out of door, they found themselves in the unfamiliar position of underdog; Sega had captured the publics attention and loyalty with a new mascot in Sonic and a powerful console that made the NES seem anitque. The Super Nintendo was certainly a more powerful system than the Genesis and owned the unquestionable dominance of both namebrand and character recogintion, by this time Mario had been around for over a decade and his likenes was equated with the best that video games had to offer, but it still took a concentrated effort from Nintendo's part, both in quality and shrude business practice, to retake the lead they'd relinquished to a relative upstart in the gaming comminuty.

    The current battle between Sony and Microsoft involves an uncanny number of parallels to the one fought between Nintendo and Sega over 14 years ago, with two major differences: this a battle for the hearts and minds, loyalty, dollars, euros and yen of second place. The race for the finish is effectively over,  the Wii is simply going and gone. People already know and accept that to the point where it's become and underlying current to any arguement regarding the seventh generation and who wins. The victor's already been decided, by such a large and unassailable margin that the real war has turned to 'who's next'. Nintendo has created such a monster that they're almost to the point of being disregarded where competition is concerned. Think Tolkien's Lord of the Rings' versus any other fantasy series.

The other difference. Forums.

That's where you guys come in, well myself also i guess. I absolutely love all the arguements, name calling, predictions, unwarranted and wholly unreasonable attachments to one console, unsubstantiated sales figures and twisted reasoning that accompanies the blazingly rediculous posts you read here at VGChartz, or anywhere where the system wars topic is prevelant. Personally, I want the 360 to crush the PS3, not because i think it's an inferior machine... just the opposite, I think it's incredible, but becuase I believe you PS3 guys are the ones that really started this system war, that's really who I want to see lose... not Sony, just you. So, knowing and understanding the reason why I want the 360 to win, I'm friekin' dying to hear the reasons that others have for supporting 'their' console so blindy, PS3 or 360. Either way.

WHY do you want your sytem to win? WHY is it so important to YOU. Now, don't be bashful. Speak up. I've read a seemingly innumerable number of posts extolling the virtues of one system over another, but, that really doesn't answer the question... so please don't confuse them. I'm not asking which system you believ to be better, I'm asking why you want one to win over the other.

Lastly, if you're not too sure about how honest competition between similiar products affects the the end result, that being the benefit to us..the consumers, read Legend11's post here:

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=49147

I think most of us want our system(s) of choice to "win" is to protect our investment, i.e. - make sure we have plenty o' software in the future.

Some of us are also very competitive...

And some people just hate company X and want to see the other company win.

crumas2 said: I think most of us want our system(s) of choice to "win" is to protect our investment, i.e. - make sure we have plenty o' software in the future. Some of us are also very competitive... And some people just hate company X and want to see the other company win.

lol, you hit the nail on the head

but if you think about it, no console is going to get "thrown away" or "Ignored" at this point, so it's all good

I just want alot of games....... END OF STORY....

lol, drop the caps man.

The bolded part in red is where you might as well have stopped typing.  The people who constantly browse forums are a *very* small part of the gaming community.  I don't want to say we don't matter because we do, but we're nowhere near a majority of a deciding factor.

If forum-goers really meant anything, Zack & Wiki would sell fifty bajillion copies and LBP would already be nipping on its heels.

I actually think there's a potentially very interesting discussion about how the 8-bit and 16-bit generations compare to this one, but your OP is really all over the place. I really don't understand which point you are trying to make. Normally when I see a thread title in all caps I don't even bother to read it, but I made an effort to read this one, and for my effort ended up more confused than before I read it.

Make another more thought out post without an all caps title and we might have something interesting to discuss, but how it is now, I'm really not sure what you think we should be discussing.

I don't own any PS, One, 2 or 3, but I prefer Sony to overtake MS to avoid any risk that we'd have if MS becomes too powerful.
As we saw in the near and far past, both Nintendo and Sony leaderships were easily and suddenly overtrown by daring ang innovating competitors, with MS it could be different, they have a bad record of actions that also extend out of the law (they prefer to pay far too low fines than stop unfair but profitable behaviours) to keep leaderships or, worst, monopolies they manage to obtain.
But even without breaking the law, MS is very dangerous, as thanks to its huge cash it can afford to even lose billions to get and keep the leadership.

Because over the last two generations I have watched gaming go straight down the tubes, pandering to creepy adolescent males in a race to the "best" graphics instead of focusing on what really matters. Two of this gen's consoles focus on continuing that downhill slide, while one is built around doing what the industry really needs to do: take the so-called "hardcore" down a few knowledge and let everyone else know that it's safe to come back. So naturally, I support that one, because frankly I want my hobby back.