There is a trend of deciding whether a game is good or not or a system is good or not when we haven't experienced them ourselves. Why is it that we listen to those who have played it and review it to tell us that they didn't like it. Are these people not the same people who rate the reiterations of call of duty 9's and 10's? 

Why is it that we look at these reviewers in a light that depicts them as knowlegeable gamers or "experts" in their fields? I have found that the only way to know if a game is good is to just take a chance on it and play it. If you don't have much money then the solution might come in the form of Red Box or Gamefly.

Why is it that we cry outrage about games that aren't even out yet and we freak out about tiny things that involve gaming? Why do we go after each other about what system the other is going to purchase? Why is it that instead of fighting for something progressive like cross-platform gaming we simply turn and try to make others feel small about the console they have proclaimed to want? 

There are a variety of Chevy and dodge and ford fans that think the other product is garbage, but they do not litter each others forums trolling about how the other person is an idiot for owning that particular vehicle. 

I will start this with a little history of myself as a gamer and community member. For the most part I sit quietly and watch what happens with the systems because I know what I want and what I am going to get. I have a pedigree of gaming to match any of the hardcore gamers out there. Nearly 100k gamerscore on the Xbox 360 and a couple decades of gaming before what we did was tracked for us. I was there for the beginning of the NES, SNES, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360, and now the XBONE.  I prefer the xbox over the playstation, now that having been said I will be called a fanboy for the xbox, even though I've owned more playstations than xbox's. 

Yes I left a few consoles out because those are the ones that I owned. I chose not to own a playstation because I am old enough to know what I like and what I dont. I know that the playstation 3 was hardware better than the 360, For me it has always been about the community and the quality of the software, and not just the hardware. Now that the hardware is barely any different (and before you go spastic on me with tech talk about how ddr5 is so much faster) I will tell you that I am an IT guy and I know that DDR5 is better and faster, but not so fast that average or even above average gamer would even remotely tell the difference. 

The fanboy in me wants to tell you that sony is no different than microsoft, they will follow suite in any way that they know how, but will be more secretive about it. That being said it's my defend microsoft time. No I don't work for microsoft or get paid by them. I work at a research company that has nothing to do with them based out of Nashville (I wont divulge more because of the nature of my work).  The always online portion of the system is quite simply the size of a ping and will take no longer than a milisecond of your time online(I will say that pretty much everyone I know is online 99.999% of the time that their xbox's are online)  Other than that they aren't really doing any different than sony, but they said it first and since they are the bigger target and since ps3 fans think they should have won the current gen war they have made a mockery of the community of gamers.

The mockery:

 The entiredy of the playstation community is doing nothing but blasting the Xbox community for being loyal and loving fans of a great system. Both of these consoles are beyond amazing, but we will all have to choose which one we want first.  The exclusives are a great way to decide, but that does not count for longevity, you really have to break it down to the inginuity of the developers of the xbox who have gone to great lengths to recreate what it is that we love so much. The community! Instead of talking about what amazing job each company has done we act like little children and bicker at each other in the forums in outrage that you hurt our ego in relation to our system. I will of course appologize that I don't know that much about the ps4 except the hardware differences, but as far as I ahve seen they haven't really shown anything that goes on behind the scenes. Xbox is showing that they worked on the entire experience, and not just the games. Microsoft doesnt develop games, they develop an operating system and put the hardware in your hands and hope that you have an amazing immersive experience. 

Instead of smashing each other we should look at what each company did right and try to improve the community as a whole. We shoudl be wanting to play together across platforms, not seperating the communities because of who thinks who is better. Gamespot should not be allowing the biased journalism that is fueling the fires of hatred between gamers. Microsoft is no angel, but neither is sony. Both of them have done things wrong, and will continue to do things wrong, but neither of these companies that work their butts off deserve to be blasted this way when all they want to do is allow us to immerse ourselves into some of the most amazing scenarios known to man. 

Sorry that this was kind of a long post. I just want us to attempt to bridge this gap and reconnect the community. I do know however that just like ford vs chevy.. and pepsi vs coke.. It's just not going to happen, but we can try. We can show all of the polticians out there that say that we are all a bunch of whiney kids that we are a community of passionate and loyal people and stop giving them reasons to fight us every step of the way.