Oliver Hilton continues our irregular forum that enables Future Gamer readers to stand on a soapbox and get things off their chest. Oliver's fed up with the continuing 'my console's better than yours' arguments and wonders if we really need all this choice.

Would a console monopoly really be such a bad thing? Think about it for a moment. Over the years we've always had a choice of consoles, be it from Nintendo, Sega and, more recently, Sony. People say that it'll be a sad day when we no longer have a choice, but will it? In the never-ending and now tiresome argument of 'my console's better than yours', there will always be a loser. The guy who bought a Saturn only to have it rubbished and become a worthless paperweight - what a waste of £150. It's not like anyone's going to want to buy it off him, so out he goes to spend yet another £150 on a PlayStation, which he now wishes he'd bought in the first place. If he hadn't had to make the initial choice, the gamble of buying this console rather than that one, he'd be a very happy man with a universal console that every game worked on and that everybody had.

Look at the PC market. For years (until very recently, anyway) we've only really had one choice when buying a personal computer - the generic, IBM-compatible PC. It's what everyone recommends and owns. But with this lack of choice came reassurance, a guarantee that from now until forever (or at least until the end of your extended Dixons warranty, whichever came first) your computer would be compatible with every new release and every new and innovative piece of technology you could want.

Upgrading was simple as everything fitted in the same slots and ports and conformed to the same standards. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration; we all know that in real life upgrading is a bitch, but the idea is just perfect.

So whether it's Sony, Nintendo or Sega that in future produce the console to take over the world and push the others out of the picture, don't be sad - there will invariably be advantages to all of us, not least the death of the bloody 'my console is better than yours' war.

Oliver Hilton