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Comment by Taylorious | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed this too. It's funny because the gaming community tends to be very polarized into fanboy groups for each console. It sort of weird right now because it seems like almost everyone is super pro Playstation. It's like the Xbox fans are pissed off and staying silent, and the Nintendo fans have just given up.

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The fanboyism is rooted in nothing that has to do with the consoles themselves. It's neotribalism at its most blatant: it's the need to belong among a group sometimes reviled (usually, ironically enough, for the rampant and verbally violent neotribalism).

This is absolutely untrue. If you watched the Sony E3 presentation for example, the moment the crowd went wild was the announcement of used game support, no check-ins, and ownership of games. This is by far the most important reason the PS4 is getting so much support, and it has nothing to do with neotribalism. The presentation was incredibly well done.

What saddened me most about that reaction was that it was for the announcement of something that we have always had. The biggest reaction at E3 was to a non-restriction, not a game!

It's only for the benefit of all the people who keep saying "Sony hasn't confirmed or denied that they won't be doin the same as the Xbone"

That's not what I'm talking about.

OK, then, how does your "neotribalism" theory explain the very sudden dissolution of three tribes into just one, while at the same time casting the original three tribes as "neotribal"? I don't see how you can call the original situation A, then insist that the exact opposite occurring is also a case of A. Or at least not without a great deal more justification of that than just tossing out a single word.

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