According to a recent report from the University of South Tacobell in Southern California, videogamers are becoming factional to the extent that a "major pseudo-religious schism" (a bloody great fight) is in the offing. Professors at Tacobell are suggesting that the apocalypse, previewed in the book of Revelation (that's v4.2b for PC users) will arise from this schism. We sent our reporter to analyse the situation.
Tim Smith

Consoles
PC and Macintosh gamers often look down on their console-playing brethren and sisteren for the simple reason that you can't write a letter on your N64. This snobbery dates back to the early days of the Sega Master System, Atari Lynx and Game Boy, when people started plugging in and playing, while the only thing that PC owners could actually do was write letters of complaint to their manufacturers. Console players, for their part, dismiss this attitude as ancient, crusty, snotty, smelly and, like, soooo boooooring, God! There's simply no reason to want to write a letter if you've got a PlayStation because, aside from going down the shops, there's no reason at all to want to communicate with other people.

Console gaming is, after all, quick, easy and deeply satisfying. It is, in short, the fast food of games playing. Why on earth would you want to mess around with cards, IRQs, cables and all of the other detritus that comes with making a PC play a game? It's like wandering around all the local shops to buy the ingredients for a hamburger that you then have to go home, cook and wait for, when all you want to do is scoff the bugger while you're getting on with rushing around Gobi Valley with Banjo Kazooie.

The point of playing games is to play games. Nothing more, nothing less. You don't want a cookery course, and you certainly don't want to be worrying yourself over whether the patch for version 11.3beta1.2 is ready yet. You want to get in there. In the same way that making a telephone call doesn't usually entail tracing the packet lengths down the copper wire to the secret listening centre at Caversham, getting Spyro to Pansy Towers should not - nay, must not - entail debugging C-code before your soundcard can utter the gut-crunching sounds of dead and dying Gnorc survivalists. Console players are the generation that make the Slackers, Generation X and the MTV generation look like Dad's Army after a session with Mr Jones' sedative collection. Immediacy is the thing. Which is why, come the apocalypse, N64, Neo Geo, Dreamcast and PSX boys and girls will be employing their learnt skills as blitzkrieg, super-fast death-givers to sort the chaff from the seed.