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The Salt is Real – Console Gaming

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4 October 2015

By Alex Khalil

Following on from the last article, we now look at the pros and cons of console gaming, and try to draw some kind of conclusion as to which is more suited to you.

Console

Probably the ‘cooler’ option when it comes to gaming, consoles are the fastest and easiest form of ‘plug and play’ since the 1970s. Some of the most popular consoles are the SNES, designed by Nintendo, the PlayStation, developed by Sony, and Xbox, by Microsoft.

Time and time again it has been proven that console gaming is the most popular form of gaming, with the iconic PS2 still holding the top spot for the most units sold, standing at over 150 million. More and more people are picking up consoles, handheld or otherwise. It’s affordable (kind of), and convenient enough, and can be marketed more easily than PC gaming. Look at the Nintendo Wii: their marketing campaign was primarily for family entertainment; it was being marketed as a party thing. You’d invite your friends over and end up thrashing them (or in my case being thrashed) at ‘Mario Kart’. It was marketed as a console for families to enjoy, young and old alike, with games like ‘Wii Sports’. The perfect home system for family fun, for all ages. Even some care homes had them for the older generation to enjoy. The Wii was available and affordable enough for any buyer,  something which simply isn’t true of the PC.

However, the Xbox and PlayStation market is a bit more…erratic? On the one hand, (particularly for Xbox One) they seem to be paying service to the whole player aspect, showcasing all the really awesome games (bar ‘AC: Unity’ and ‘Evolve’, which turned out to be utter drivel), and focusing on the fact that ‘we’re gamers yo; we game, we use guns and stuff; yeah, gaming rocks’, (tip: if you imagine that in a gruff American accent it sounds better). But then they try to draw attention to the fact that they want it to be used as a ‘home room’ console. Something you have in the sitting room with your Nan on her recliner, with all the family enjoying a game, and this simply does not make sense. If you’re marketing with titles like ‘Call Of Duty’ and ‘AC: Unity’, you aren’t then going to switch it to ‘oh we want to create a family friendly console’, unless you want to drastically confuse your market.

Moving on, I think it is fair to say that while consoles offer a lot of games, they are often the target for trouble in the community, with certain consoles getting games that others can’t. For example, ‘Halo’ on Xbox, and ‘The Last of Us’ on PS4 – although why you’d want to own the next ‘Halo’ game is beyond me… but still! A lot of shady dealings have happened within companies just because they want more cash out of a console, so Sony gave ‘Destiny’ players exclusive content before Xbox players, for example. This is just disgusting, because they are favouring one console over the other.

So, it’s time to draw this long-suffering argument to a close. We’re all gamers, and while we may think otherwise, we all enjoy what we play and what we do, and to judge one person because of how they play is stupid. Because then all you become is a self entitled neckbearded idiot with no concept of the fact that maybe some people can’t afford an expensive graphics card, or the best hardware money can buy. This swings both ways though. However, it would be naive to not accept that PC gaming is graphically and mechanically better. If you strip down a PC, the hardware is so much more advanced. Strip down an Xbox or PS4, it’ll be three year old hardware.

So there we have it. The solution is: everybody just stop being mean on the internet about people’s interests. That’ll work? Right?

 

 

 

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