Why Do We Fight?

In the wake of a new generation of console wars I realized I have an opinion that hasn't really seemed to be voiced. Yes, I'm a grown man that loves his video games. Yes, I feel like I have a stake in whatever these corporations make available to us to fuel this hobby. Too bad I there doesn't seem to be anything inventive going on this generation, save terrible press conferences and retractions. Microsoft has completely alienated its consumer base while Sony seems to want make things easier for indie developers to get down the pipe. All the chatter seems to be about these issues. To be honest I don't plan on spending four or five hundred dollars for a new console at launch where it looks like everything that will be done looks like it could have been done on the generation before it. 

When we were graced with the change from 8 to 16 bit gaming sound, graphic quality, and controller design seemed to improve leaps and bounds. When we went from 16 to 32 bit gaming the third dimension was a revolution. The jump to the 128 bit times brought us the beginnings of online play and a huge jump in storage media. And this last generation was the unveiling of the HD experience. Where are we going from here? I can't really see anything truly next gen happening here (I don't buy cloud computing yet, bandwidth is still quite expensive).

Why are we fighting over this anyway? The days of SEGA vs. Nintendo are long gone, games cost so much money to make that titles that move millions of units are considered failures, and it seems the masses are just fine with buying similar games every year. We can't completely blame the public where we blame the economy for everything. Sure games are technically cheaper than they've ever been, but now people work harder to keep what they have; buying multiple $60 games every month (or several a year) can't be expected. There's a reason some of the sleeper hits from the last few years didn't get widespread discovery until prices went down.

Alright you can fight. I'll watch. From my backlog of games from the 8 bit era until now. I really mean to finish Contra without the Konami Code at some point...