Console Wars / Console Debates

About

Console Wars (also dubbed Console Debates) are a type of flame war between fans of video game consoles. Console debates lead to the coining of the phrase The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race. The Eighth Generation of gaming consoles also lead to the creation of animated GIFs and image macros depicting battles of competitors. These debates are characterized as being lead by fanboys and often parallel PC Wars and Browser Wars debates.

Precursors

Throughout the early history of gaming consoles, Console Wars were marketing battles between companies that were aimed at increasing their share in the market. After the gaming crash of 1983, console wars helped determine which systems would stay in the market and see future generations of consoles.

Sega vs Nintendo

The first major war began with the Forth generation of consoles between Sega and Nintendo in the 90s. Though the sales of the cartridges was important, the companies ran marketing campaigns against each other during that time.

The rivalry ultimately carried over to latter generations, where Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo would become leading competitors in the market.

Origin

Forum Debates

Gif Battles

On June 5th, 2012, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was held in Los Angeles, California, where Microsoft unveiled several upcoming games and new features for the Xbox 360, Sony presented new games and updates to the PlayStation and Nintendo showed titles for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. During the conference, many animated GIFs depicting the three companies engaging in battle (shown below) were posted in a thread on the NeoGAF Forums.^[7]

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Spread

Hyperdimesnion Neptunia

Hyperdimension Neptunia ^[8] is a series of JRPGs on the Playstation 3 based on the console wars, featuring Moe Antropomorisms of the Playstation 3, Wii and Xbox, as well as a scrapped SEGA console named the Neptune. And later the Game Gear, PSP, Nintendo DS^[9], Sega Genesis, Turbo-Grafix16 and Atari 2600^[10].

In the first game, The protagonist, Neptune had lost a battle in the console wars and was kicked out of the domain of Celestia, losing her memory in the process. She is asked by a disembodied voice (later revealed to be of a tome that records the history of the world of Gameindustri, where the setting takes place) to help unseal her and stop Arfoire. She does it with the help of various people, Moe Anthropomorphism of various companies, primarily the developers Idea Factory and Compile Heart. The 2nd game has shifted focus to her sister, Nepgear, and various themes of piracy, while Victory returns the console wars theme, this set in the era of the NES, and Sega Genesis (Though the character representing the Xbox is still present, presumably as a nod to the MSX or the the beginning of the Xbox's development. The Character representing on the Playstation is also present)

The first game had a negative reaction regarding its gameplay, people loved the story and characters enough to warrant a sequel which changes and improves the gameplay, and later another sequel that also improves on the gameplay. All 3 released games have been remade for the Playstaion Vita, with the first remake being ported to Steam ^[11] and a port of the second being on the way^[12].

South Park Parody

[Researching]

Eight Generation Gif Battles

On February 10th, 2013, Redditor deepbrown submitted an animated GIF to the /r/PS3^[6] subreddit, featuring representatives from the various console companies edited into footage from the 2009 science fiction film Star Trek (shown below). In the comments section, Redditor iDecline provided links to several other console wars animated GIFs. Prior to being archived, the post gathered over 840 up votes and 80 comments.

On May 17th, IGN Forums^[2] member started a "console war GIFs" thread. On June 11th, the 2013 E3 convention was held, where details were released for the upcoming Xbox One and PS 4 consoles. On the same day, Odd Future Talk Forums^[1] member Figger submitted a thread asking for users to submit the "best GIFs" pertaining to the Xbox One and PS 4 console wars. Also on June 11th, the college lifestyle blog Coed^[4] published a compilation of notable PS4 vs. Xbox Tumblr GIFs.

On June 21st, the pop culture blog Heavy posted^[3] a compilation of notable console war GIFs. On August 29th, 9gag^[5] user abdozkert submitted an animated GIF featuring several Pokemon representing different video game consoles (shown below). In the next 10 weeks, the post garnered upwards of 6,000 up votes and 2,300 shares.

Steam Deck vs. Nintendo Switch

Steam Deck vs. Nintendo Switch is a console war between fans of Steam Deck portable PC platform and Nintendo Switch handheld console. The debate started on social media websites immediately following the announcement of Steam Deck in July 2021.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References