Console wars, OS wars, editor wars, and shared resources

You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board.

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
tepples
Posts: 22708
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Console wars, OS wars, editor wars, and shared resources

Post by tepples »

Now that one poorly received user is at least taking a break from this community, I can catch up on reading four months' backlog on this forum and replying without fear of "baiting" anyone.
jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:13 pmA wise YouTuber once said (don't remember who, this was at least 10 years ago) that he thinks console war arguments are people avoiding buyer's remorse. If you convince yourself the other console has no redeeming qualities you don't feel bad that you bought the wrong one.
Related article: "Technology Holy Wars are Coordination Problems" by Gwern Branwen
It touches on MD vs. SNES, Windows vs. Linux, Emacs vs. vi vs. Visual Studio Code, and other "holy wars" that seek to protect the perceived value of one's investment of time and money in a technology. It goes on to explain the root of holy warriors' fear: the popularity of "one platform indirectly harms [users of] other platforms by wresting away shared resources."

Consoles and handhelds have also long had the additional angle of lockout compared to PCs: "I consider this device useless because its manufacturer won't let the developer of the game I like to play buy a devkit to port it." Or "I consider this device useless because its manufacturer won't let me make modifications to games' single-player experiences."
User avatar
jeffythedragonslayer
Posts: 344
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2021 12:29 pm

Re: Console wars, OS wars, editor wars, and shared resources

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

The bottom line here is that Iwata was right - video games are about fun for everyone. The most fun I've had playing non-Nintendo consoles wasn't when some fanboy was trying to shove their reasons why their games or consoles were better down my throat and insult what Nintendo does (no company is perfect after all.) It definitely wasn't when I was being told I just suck at the game and that my critique wasn't valid after explaining to a bigger fan of that game why I wasn't having fun, even though I wanted to. One of the goals of romhackers is to fix problems in released games after all.

The most fun I've had was when someone just wanted to hang out and chill, and just happened to own a PlayStation or Xbox instead of a Nintendo. Yes, I'm going to call it a Nintendo - there is such a thing :mrgreen: The people chilling and relaxing always looked like they're having more fun than fanboys who are frothing at the mouth to me.

When I look at the times in my life where I didn't play many games, it was when someone was trying to force me to have fun by shoving games I didn't like (due to toxic social environments and communities around those games, like getting yelled at for being skilled enough at it, or just not being genre savvy) instead of setting the stage and letting it happen naturally. If it's not okay to be a noob, then that community is killing its next generation.

Whether it's a poorly worded textbox of Randi in Secret of Mana lamenting how getting through would be easier if only he had an axe, when I actually had already gotten that axe, or Final Fantasy III expecting me to know that a blinking four pointed star is a save point and not an info block like in Yoshi's Island, when a single sentence would have cleared up all that confusion - these are things a lot of fans of these games wouldn't even consider valid criticism - I think fans of all games and consoles tend to have tunnel vision about the flaws and often have trouble appreicating how big of stumbling blocks they are to new players because they've learned and adapted to them long ago. I really want to like these games more - I just didn't know many people who would patiently explain how to enjoy them until now.
Oziphantom
Posts: 1565
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2017 2:03 am

Re: Console wars, OS wars, editor wars, and shared resources

Post by Oziphantom »

I feel holy wars back then where a playground effect of which Network was the only true factor. I.e if all your friends have the same machine then you can share and swap games more easily.
I also feel that "class war" is more a factor, one machine was more expensive than the other and hence came with a status. For example a Spectrum was for the poor, Commodore 64 for the richer, Master System for the richer than that, NES richer again, MegaDrive for the richer again, SNES was at the top, and NeoGeo was Stupidly rich. So your machine was a reflection of your "lot in life", see also the various spec badges on a Ford motor car. I.e the E vs GL.
To why this carries on to this day, people don't want the shame of being poor or having made the "wrong decision". Different cultures treat class differently, the UK is very strong on this topic, and hence when we think of these holy wars the UK crops up a lot.

For the most part these are not true holy wars, as we can objectively compare the machines.
A Commodore 64 will destroy a Spectrum 16K and 48K. A 128K Specturm can be argued successfully that it would be better at word processing or spreedsheets due to its larger memory, but for entertainment software a C64 will still destroy it.
A master system has better colours than a NES, but the NES has better options thanks to expansions.
A SNES will greatly outdo a MD in terms of graphics and sound.
For the sake of games then a NES is better than a C64, however if you factor in price and ability to use other software types a C64 easily wins.
However the C64 "being the one" did benefit it greatly, as it sat on a shelf next to a PS1, so there is merit to the resources argument.

Although we can argue that if people didn't buy the MD, then all the good MD games would be on the SNES and thus everybody would be better off, this is kind of silly, however the Master System might benefit from this argument more and Nintendo actively blocked it.
Post Reply