Why I Don't Mind Batting for Both Teams (Figuratively Speaking...)

I’ve been a self-confessed Xbox “fanboy” (as much as I hate the term “fanboy”) for a good nine years, ever since I borrowed my uncle’s console and a copy of Halo while he buggered off to Tenerife for a fortnight. Two weeks and three playthroughs later, and my Playstation One went over the trade-in counter quicker than a copy of BMX XXX.
I was a huge fan from then on – I even traded my standard black Xbox for one of those limited edition “Crystal” ones. 

When the 360 hit the shelves, I bought one as soon as I could afford it, picked up The Orange Box and Condemned (which I returned as I just couldn’t enjoy beating vagrants to death with steel pipes) and got stuck in. I’ve probably spent an average of £50 - £100 a month on games ever since. Three RROD incidents have since persuaded me to sell my reconditioned Arcade machine and invest in a 250gb Slim. Best console I ever bought. I didn’t care that it didn’t have a Blu-Ray player built in, or that it hums like a knackered fridge if I don’t install whatever I’m playing. I chortled away with every other Xbox “supporter” when PSN was hacked and “our” network was nice and secure.

But then, without prior warning, I suddenly started to hanker after something else, something different, something… forbidden. I mean, I’ve enjoyed some of the finest platform exclusives ever developed: Halo: CE to Reach, Fable (1 & 2 – don’t get me started on 3) Gears of War, Mass Effect… But I wanted more. Suddenly, I wanted to see how the other side live… About a year ago my eye was caught by a little game called Demon’s Souls. It was hardcore, people said. It was a genuine challenge and would make you its bitch. I was intrigued, but ignored it like I ultimately ignored all the PS3 exclusives, telling myself that the 360-onlies were just as good, that I didn’t need Demon’s Souls or Uncharted, Heavy Rain, Little Big Planet, God of War 3 or InFAMOUS. 

But it nagged at me. The more I read about Demon’s Souls and it’s supposedly hardcore challenge, the more I wanted to accept said challenge. In the end I gave in – not just for From Software’s bastard-hard dungeon crawler but for a handful of other exclusives that, as a gamer, I felt I was missing out on.

Now, I’m not here to bait fanboys from either camp (unless you’re a Wii fanboy, of course, because the catalogue of Wii exclusives mostly sucks like a toothless hooker), so I won’t say which console I’m currently preferring or which as the better exclusives. I’ll instead simply say that by restricting oneself to a single console for reasons of pure elitism, you’re missing out. Yes, we can hate the 360 for not having a Blu-Ray player, or frown upon the PS3 because the hackers made such a laugh of PSN’s security, but it’s ultimately pointless. 

Exclusives like Demon’s Souls, Uncharted and Heavy Rain, or Halo, Gears of War and Fable, deserved to be enjoyed by all gamers, regardless of your persuasion. They simply outclass a huge number of multiplatform releases and beg to be played. I’m happy to have shaken off my 360 fanboyism and embraced a new way of gaming, free of platform bias and the need to flame. And if it let’s me play games like InFAMOUS and Halo: Reach in the same afternoon from the comfort of my own living room, then I’m happy to be sitting firmly on the fence on this one.