"Sony caters to the hardcore crowd!" "Microsoft has the best online service!" "Nintendo's games are the most fun!" So go the cries of brand loyalists everywhere. You've heard them. I've heard them. Anyone who comes within a mile of a gathering of gamers has heard them.

The console wars, as we affectionately call them, are nothing new to the gaming business. In reality, heated debates over brand superiority have probably been around since the dawn of capitalism. In a market where every moved unit counts for publishers and manufacturers, the marketing pushes by the Big Three pull out all the stops in order to gain our allegiance.

Lately, I've had to consider this situation, this marketing war. I took a hard look at all the hype and debating. Quite frankly, didn't like at all what I saw.

It's like this: We'd like to believe that we're thinking for ourselves when we choose which brands to favor. We'd like to hold on to the idea that we know what is best. The problem is that when I considered my own brand leanings, I realized that I had a very, very narrow and shortsighted perspective.

Why do I think my perspective was too limited for its own good? I'm glad you asked. Quite simply, I took a minute to look outside of the present situation. A wise man once suggested that everything repeats itself, that nothing is new under the sun. So, I looked outside of the present battlefield where companies are pushing a bigger-and-better mentality to find out what things looked like in the past.

Unsurprisingly, this is exactly the way things were 20 years ago. Replace PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with SuperNES and Genesis. What do you see? Yep. You've got it. Nintendo and Sega are pushing games and hardware that are bigger and better.

Now, come back to the present. What is the significance today of a console war that took place 20 years ago? SuperNES and Genesis may hold some of our fondest gaming memories, but is there any relevance left from a console war that took place back then? Hardly, and I would likely want to slap the guy who still argues about which system is superior.

Instead, we are now reaping the benefits of the wars from yesteryear. We see this in the innovation and production quality demanded by a fierce competition. Brand loyalty to the systems of ages past has been rendered meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

So why is today any different? I don't believe that it is. Companies will push and shove and scream and shout about the superiority of their works. Will it matter in 20 years, 10 years, even five years which company had the consumer loyalty now? That seems unlikely in the extreme.

Unfortunately, every time a gamer takes up arms under a brand name in the shouting matches of a marketing war, he or she is quickly reduced to a statistic. That gamer becomes little more than a sheep led into its pen by the voice of a silver-tongued marketing manager.

Ultimately, it is only when we expand our view of a competitive market to encompass the past, present, and future that we can appreciate the situation for what it is. Then we will see that the competition of now will be to the benefit of the entire industry in the long run.

If, on the other hand, we limit our perspectives to the present state of the eternal console war, then we are sure to fall into the traps laid by directors of hype. We end up being people ready to take the bait and fall in line as unwitting brand loyalists.

-Kenny Yeager