The fanboy mentality.

This is the penultimate blog that I’ll be posting – it’s been good, we’ve had some laughs and we’ve all learnt something. It would be good to keep this up on a semi-regular basis but at the moment I’m so swamped with work that it’d be impossible at the minute. Possibly in the next 3 weeks or so I’ll pick it up again.

Anyway, onto the blog. Today is the thorny issue of fanboys, the definition of which is someone who vehemently supports one format despite any decent releases on other rival platforms. I’m only mentioning this because I recently came across the most ardent of gaming zealots in my flatmate Nick. He’s a genuinely annoying and ridiculously passionate individual when it comes to....almost any subject really, but he really starts foaming at the mouth when Microsoft are mentioned. While it’s been made fairly clear that I’m not a member of the Bill Gates fan club it hasn’t reached the point yet where I’d murder him and defile his corpse like Nick would.
He is such a fan of Sony that I’m fairly confident that if I fired a gun at a PS3 (not mine), Nick would leap in the way and take the bullet himself, sparing the Playstation a grisly death.

I don’t really understand the fanboy mentality and I’ve tried discussing this with him at great length. As far as he’s concerned it doesn’t matter what games are out for a certain platform – it only matters which company makes that console. For instance, when I bought my PSP he practically proposed to me and became my best friend for a few days – quite the opposite when I came home with a DSi though. When he found out that I had one he made me feel like I was trying to cheat on the PSP, like I was conducting my DSi activities in privacy like some sordid affair.
I’ve met many like him in my time as a gamer, especially online, and I was just curious as to whether anyone had certain predilections toward a specific format and why? I could understand that for some cost would be an issue but any reasons would be ace.