Why cross-play will mean the end of console wars – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader explains why he’s never been a fan of console war rhetoric and how he hopes the adoption of cross-play will put an end to it.

For many generations we have seen and experienced battles between gaming giants like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, all offering their own consoles and exclusive games. In the 1990s the console wars pitted Sega’s Mega Drive against the Super Nintendo console, with both offering fierce, competitive alternatives to each other, with some of the greatest games to ever be released in that era.

During the days of the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo consoles were not online and it wasn’t until the 2000s, when both Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation 2 began to offer online access, that it ensured the console wars would continue to grow and result in many gamers being alienated between different systems.

However, as technology has advanced we now have the introduction of cross-play gaming. Cross-play gaming has ensured the beginning of a better era for the gaming industry to progress to the point where console wars should now become a thing of the past.

I have always been against console wars as it causes two main problems:

Alienation of gamers

Being on different consoles results in gamers being divided as a community and being forced to remain on one console to play the games that their friends are playing on the same system. This results in people who own a different console being unable to play with their friends and being limited to playing with an entirely different community instead. This reduces the number of players available in an online session and means it becomes harder and harder just to be able to play with and meet other people who enjoy the same game as you. A disadvantage for gamers