There is only one thing that can stop all of the rampant fanboy-ism that is devouring the industry that I love, and I pray that I never see the day where it happens. The minute that it happens I will officially be done with video games…and that is if the industry evolves into having only a single home console. Who am I kidding, I’ll still be into video games when I’m old and gray no matter what. If interested in seeing my opinons on this and how we would see the death of the fanboy, click the jump below.

As I was saying, this industry is getting back to the horror days of my childhood where it was Sega vs. Nintendo in an epic battle to the death. On one system you had the graphics and amazing music and sound processing that the SNES could do and on the other you had the adult content and excellent processing speed of the Genesis.

Fast-forward 15 years and here we are again in a battle to the death over the 3 prevalent home game consoles. You have the Wii with its waggle and non-HD graphics, the Xbox 360 which is making a killing in America and in Europe, and finally the PS3 which is being slated to be the console of 2008 (I know it gets my pick for games this year), all of them battling it out for developers and your money. What can stop this horrendous onslaught? The answer is simple, one console.

I don’t care who will make it, but I honestly think that there will be a singular console market one of these days. There is a trend with each generation that labels a ”winning” console of that generation. Last generation we had the PS2, and before then we had the original PlayStation. Going even further back, the SNES and the NES easily proved to be the winners over the Genesis and the Master System respectively.

There are many benefits to there being a singular console, but for your sake, I’ll try to keep it to three main points.

• The first benefit would be that there would no longer be any reason for developers to worry anymore about programming for multiple machines. This would not only cut down on development time (Lost Planet for the PS3 anyone?).

• Second, if we had only one console, there would be no more fanboys! God, I don’t know about you, but this whole market where people need to feel validated that they were the smartest and picked up the “right” systems is horrible and has been the cause of most internet fights and a major concern for poor forum moderators around the globe!

• Finally, costs would be cut across the board. Think how nice it would be to have only one console to have to purchase! No longer would people like me, who have to have the newest (and in my mind best) version of a game that is out, worry about having to either wait to purchase their games, or feel buyer’s remorse. Damn, If I was to find out that the extended version of Gears of War was coming to the PS3, I’d be out the door with cash in hand to secure my preorder.

The one and only drawback that I can see with the industry making such a move would be the death of all competition between consoles. This competition is the driving force for most major in-house development teams that are all grasping for our attention and more importantly our wallets.

One only needs to take a look at Nintendo to see this trend. After the N64 and Gamecube’s sales didn’t quite meet the quota they were hoping for, the sustained release of first party games throughout the life of both limping systems kept the company’s home console division going.

People tend to buy consoles after seeing or having the promise of there being a “system seller”. If there were no competition between consoles for the hot games we would see many games potentially becoming mediocre or just rehashes of already popular series. I wasn’t actually hoping to change any of your minds out there, I just wanted to give you all a little food for thought the next time you hear a fanboy go off about which system is better. Now you can simply laugh and know that he probably doesn’t see the big picture of the industry. Thank you for your time and for reading my rant this week.