Fanboy-ism and PS3

[ariakon]

I don't know if this is an appropriate topic for this forum, but I generally like the opinions of this group and I feel that I have to bring up something that seems to be plaguing the game industry, at least where I live. I am twenty-six-years-old and yet feel sometimes that I am in Elementary School again because I find myself getting irritated at the inflamatory nature of other gamers and feel rather stupid for letting it get to me. I love my PS3 but am very quiet about it and do not want to taunt others because they like something different than I do. Yet I feel sometimes that I have to buy games from Amazon because every store employee makes a snide comment about how I should buy a certain game for the 360 or how I should trade in my PS3 and get a 360. Also, I like to research games but every gaming website seems to care about nothing but sales figures and, while I do not want to care about sales figures, I see so many spouting so much ridiculousness about sales figures that they almost become more important to me than actually enjoying gaming as my hobby. Do any of you guys feel like this? I don't want to care that more people bought 360's in November but then there are messages in the forums that basically call anyone who likes PS3 an idiot because the Xbox sells more systems than PS3 does. I have a thing about being called an idiot, and wish that I could just read about games without having to wage some stupid console war that some people apparently take more seriously than the real wars we are currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The holidays seem to make people particularly ridiculous and leads me to wonder if I just notice the negative people or if most people who play games really are so immature that they dislike other people simply because they play different video games? I guess my question is, does this fanboy-ism seem more prevalent to you guys in this console generation, and does it affect your enjoyment of video games? Because right now it is affecting my enjoyment, and I wish I could just get back to enjoying the games instead of fretting about whether they will do well or not.