The Great Gaming Divide

Yes ladies and gentlemen, today I want to talk about videogames...I guess the nature of life, the universe, and everything can wait a day or so (hehehe)...

Have you ever noticed the, shall we say, tension between PC gamers and console gamers? At times it's almost like two rival gangs. On the one hand, PC gamers rib console gamers for tollerating 640x480 screens and playing FPSs with no mouse. They lambast the lack of strategy games and chuckle at the thought of "multiplayer" meaning four people in front of one TV. On the other hand, console gamers have this general distaste for PC gaming. They complain about the price of a decent PC rig and sneer at the lack of console style RPGs. Then they mutter something about how FPSs and startegy games are the only well maintained PC genres.

What strikes me here is that these are perceptions generated entirely by the gaming populace, and not corporate hype machines. Think about it...Console giants such as EA, Codemasters, Rockstar, Konami, and THQ have all seen fit to release PC versions of prominent console games. Even Square, Sega, and Sony-era Psygnosis supported PC from time to time. Conversely, PC-centric companies such as ID, Epic, DICE, Bethesda, and others have brought famous PC games to consoles. It's definately not in these companies interests to bash either side.

There is, of course, the perception that PC gaming is somehow very seperate from console gaming. When Rockstar signed a single platform exclusivity agreement with Sony for Grand Theft Auto, nothing prevented PC versions of GTA3 and VC. Back when the only way to play Sega games was supposed to be a Sega console, PC version of Sega classics from Outrun to Sega Rally 2 were made.

And yet, though there may be divide in software, there has never been a divide between PC hardware (in the sense of all personal computers and not the Wintel sense) and console hardware. The NES and SNES shared CPUs with models on the Apple II line (6502 and 65c816 respectively). The Sega Master System and Gameboy were both powered by a Z80, an infamous and widely used copy of the Intel 8080. The Genesis and Sega CD shared CPUs with the early Macintosh line (the 68000). N64, Playstation, and Playstation 2 both drew upon technology from SGI's workstation lines (MIPS cores). Dreamcast is well known for having a PC graphics chip at it's heart, but the SH series of CPUs had also been used in handheld PCs running WindowsCE. Gamecube, of course uses a video chip from ATI and a modified version of the G3 chip that powered Macintosh a few years back. From a hardware perspective, XBox is only unique because it uses an official Intel CPU. In a very real sense, at the most basic levels, console and PC gaming are just branches on one big videogaming tree.

However, as many have come to find out, facts are quickly lost on the gaming masses. Nearly every message board has some misguided soul who will complain that the XBox is too much like a PC, or that he hates PC gaming in general. Really, I think it's time for gamers of all creeds to just get over it and become one big gaming continuum.