Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Hardware
  • Video
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Deals
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • SFX
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
View
Trending
  • Summer Game Fest
  • New games for 2025
  • Upcoming Switch 2 games
  • Switch 2 stock

Recommended reading

Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot of Solas
RPGs Ex Dragon Age writer worries more fans are tying their identity to games and hoping to see games fail to prove a point: "See what happened to them? See how their game sold?"
A collection of board games and a GR+ logo on a wooden table
Tabletop Gaming Types of board games, explained by experts
The Outer Worlds 2 Earth agent with rifle
RPGs The Outer Worlds 2 devs have already shown the background I'll be using in this RPG: the Roustabout, a talentless loser who is "not quite sure what happened" to get them here
Helldivers 2
Games "We cough up a chunk of our soul": 32 game devs, from Doom's John Romero to Helldivers 2 and Palworld leads, explain what people get wrong about games
Zoomed in picture of a Balatro Joker plush.
Games "It was not 'one guy', look at the dang in-game credits": Balatro's Localthunk joins team size discourse after Geoff Keighley fumbled it at Summer Game Fest by saying Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was made by "under 30" people
Helldivers 2 Chemical Agents warbond screenshot, showing two Helldivers running away from a green fog.
Third Person Shooters The threat of Helldivers 2's Super Earth collapsing still isn't enough to tempt its most reviled groups to join the fight and complete a Major Order: "We need everyone on Super Earth, literally"
Rat in Xbox commercial
Xbox Xbox channels PS2 era weirdness in a new commercial directed by David Fincher about rats finding their humanity through gaming
  1. Games
  2. Action

10 gamers you'll meet during the console wars

Features
By Matt Bradford published September 9, 2013

A guide to the who's who of next-gen debates

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Everyone has a type

Everyone has a type

Do you match with any of our over-generalized stereotypes? Find out in the our rundown of the 10 people you'll meet in a next-gen war...

Page 1 of 12
Page 1 of 12
The gun-jumper

The gun-jumper

Why we need them: Gun-Jumpers defend the frontlines of the console wars. They're the first to fire, the first to recruit, and the first to pick us up when we're losing faith in our super-machine of choice. Without them, we'd forget what we were fighting for in the first place.

Page 2 of 12
Page 2 of 12
The flip-flopper

The flip-flopper

Why we need them: The Flip-Flopper provides balance in the often heated next-gen debate. As a neutral agent, they motivate loyalists on both sides to drop the rhetoric and find convincing arguments as to why the Flip-Flopper should join their side.

Page 3 of 12
Page 3 of 12
The retro-hipster

The retro-hipster

Why we need them: They can be right some of the time. Technical limitations in the past forced developers to make up for lack of whiz-bang production with solid gameplay and creative designs. That's not to say today's studios don't deliver that same quality, but how can we be sure any next-gen game will be equally memorable.

Page 4 of 12
Page 4 of 12
The PC elitist

The PC elitist

Like Bruce Wayne to the Bat Signal or Superman to a crying baby, the PC elitist* pounces into action whenever talk of console gaming threaten to tear the industry asunder. It only takes a whisper of non-PC entertainment to stir this vigilante into action and send him swooping in to forums to save ignorant gamers from themselves. PS4? Xbox One? What is this, 2009? As the PC Elitest is eager to point out, consoles will never achieve the purity that is PC gaming. And so, it is the life-long burden of the PC Elitist to show console players a 'better way', lest they grind the industry to a halt with their destructive gaming choices.

Why we need them: Despite their belief that console players are willfully trapped in a hellish, mod-free prison, PC elitists serve as a reminder that we really do have options. In some cases, PC gaming can actually bring more to the table... provided you have the cash, patience, and technological know-how to keep up. What's more, most PC elitists are (mostly) willing to assist you in obtaining PC-gaming prosperity (provided you admit they were always right).

*First appearance: The Top 7 Stereotypical gamers we hate.

Page 5 of 12
Page 5 of 12
The truth teller

The truth teller

Xbox One's launch date

Why we need them: 99.5% of the time, the truth teller is repeating what they heard from another, more obscure 'source' (See slide #10). But on that rare 0.5% occasion, they reveal a connection or fact few have considered. If anything, the truth teller is the devil's advocate who keeps us on our toes and questioning what we think we know.

Page 6 of 12
Page 6 of 12
The overreactor

The overreactor

Did you hear?! The Xbox One is a secret weapon for the NSA! The PS4 will set your used games on fire! And the Wii U? A developer you never heard of tweeted it's less powerful than an alarm clock! To the overreactor, every snippet of next-gen information is an excuse to elevate the tone of a console debate to Defcon Level 1. It doesn't matter if they're freaking out over a feature they can choose to ignore, or ranting about the lack of a feature they'll never use. All that matters to the overreactor is arming themselves with alarming facts and rumors that can be lobbed into next-gen discussions as verbal grenades.

Why we need them: There are always important details that studios either attempt to sweep under the rug or otherwise go unnoticed. Thanks to the overreactor, we have more information from which to form our own opinion--even if that information feels like it's being screamed into our ear by a lunatic in a tin foil hat.

Page 7 of 12
Page 7 of 12
The techno babbler

The techno babbler

Why we need them: Tech matters. True, PS4 and Xbox One are largely similar where it counts, but the techno babbler helps us understand where they differ and why we should care.

Page 8 of 12
Page 8 of 12
The exclusive snob

The exclusive snob

Why we need them: We can lose ourselves in the tiny details and system nitpicks, but at the end of the day, isn't the whole point to play games we enjoy? Thanks to the exclusive snob, we're reminded about what counts, and we're better informed about our launch day selections.

Page 9 of 12
Page 9 of 12
The source

The source

Why we need them: Because reliable sources exist and they can be the impartial piece of the puzzle that helps gamers sift through all the PR jargon and achieve their final form: The truth teller.

Page 10 of 12
Page 10 of 12
The Richie Rich

The Richie Rich

Why we need them: Their mouths don't say much, but their wallets speak volumes. Thanks to the Richie Riches of the world, we can sleep tight knowing that the console manufacturer we're ignoring won't go bankrupt without our support.

Page 11 of 12
Page 11 of 12
Fun with clichs

Fun with clichs

Want more? Rage along to the The Top 7 Stereotypical gamers we hate and thumb your nose at The Top 7 Girl gamer stereotypes.

Page 12 of 12
Page 12 of 12
CATEGORIES
Wii-u PS4 Xbox One Platforms Nintendo PlayStation Xbox
PRODUCTS
Titanfall Wii U
Matt Bradford
Social Links Navigation

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries. 

See more Xbox One Features
Read more
Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot of Solas
Ex Dragon Age writer worries more fans are tying their identity to games and hoping to see games fail to prove a point: "See what happened to them? See how their game sold?"
A collection of board games and a GR+ logo on a wooden table
Types of board games, explained by experts
The Outer Worlds 2 Earth agent with rifle
The Outer Worlds 2 devs have already shown the background I'll be using in this RPG: the Roustabout, a talentless loser who is "not quite sure what happened" to get them here
Helldivers 2
"We cough up a chunk of our soul": 32 game devs, from Doom's John Romero to Helldivers 2 and Palworld leads, explain what people get wrong about games
Zoomed in picture of a Balatro Joker plush.
"It was not 'one guy', look at the dang in-game credits": Balatro's Localthunk joins team size discourse after Geoff Keighley fumbled it at Summer Game Fest by saying Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was made by "under 30" people
Helldivers 2 Chemical Agents warbond screenshot, showing two Helldivers running away from a green fog.
The threat of Helldivers 2's Super Earth collapsing still isn't enough to tempt its most reviled groups to join the fight and complete a Major Order: "We need everyone on Super Earth, literally"
Latest in Action
Fallen Tear: The Ascension
Hollow Knight: Silksong has its own GTA 6-like release date blast zone – "I hope Silksong will release this year coz we are avoiding them," says boss of lovely JRPG-flavored Metroidvania
MindsEye
MindsEye dev says new performance hotfix is "the first in a series of patches," but with 40% positive reviews and just over 500 players on Steam, it would take a miracle to turn this train around
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hollow Knight: Silksong dev simultaneously backtracks and doubles down on possible DLC, thinks "DLC is likely" despite his last apparent teaser being a joke
Best Rainbow Six Siege X Operators
The best Rainbow Six Siege X Operators for beginners
Mindseye
MindsEye is getting 3 hotfixes this month to remedy its rough launch as devs explain those viral bugs "were caused by a memory leak" that "impacted roughly 1 in 10 of our players"
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom screenshot showing Princess Zelda with tied-back blonde hair and emerald green eyes, wielding a sword before her face
Forget blindfolded runs, a Switch 2-exclusive challenge emerges as fan proves you can play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with your Joy-Con attached the wrong way
Latest in Features
The Outer Worlds 2 screenshot showing a handgun being reloaded in the middle of combat
After playing The Outer Worlds 2, I'm convinced that it has the potential to be Obsidian's greatest game – and the best FPS of 2025
Grounded 2 screenshot showing the entrance to the Ice Cream Truck chill area, with Summer Preview 2025 branding
Everything is bigger in Grounded 2, but Obsidian never considered stretching beyond four-player co-op: "It would have undermined what Grounded was really about"
Grounded 2 screenshot with Summer Preview logo
After playing Grounded 2 for 30 minutes, it's clear that my favorite survival game is getting a massive glow-up
Marco Ng as Alan in The Way We Talk
A new Hong Kong drama about three d/Deaf friends brings sign language to the big screen in a different way
Kill Team: Typhon box and card decks on a wooden table
Kill Team: Typhon introduces an unexpected twist to its competitive gameplay, and I think it might be a game-changer
End of Abyss Summer Preview
I played 30 minutes of the new game from the original Little Nightmares devs, and it turns out a twin-stick survival horror Metroidvania is a recipe for spooky heaven
  1. Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour screenshot
    1
    Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour review: "Mostly a fancy toy and not much more"
  2. 2
    MindsEye review: "An uninspired and forgettable sci-fi action adventure that feels like a Netflix movie you watch while on your phone"
  3. 3
    The Alters review: "More tactile and story-heavy than the Frostpunk dev's earlier games, but the fight for survival is just as fierce"
  4. 4
    Splitgate 2 review: "A slick and enjoyable free-to-play FPS, but a disappointing sequel"
  5. 5
    Date Everything review: "A masterclass in character design full of wonderful faces I love meeting, but juggling so many means sacrificing depth"
  1. The Yautja in Dan Trachtenberg's animated movie Predator: Killer of Killers
    1
    Predator: Killer of Killers review: "Great characters, thrilling action, and gorgeous Arcane-esque animation"
  2. 2
    From the World of John Wick: Ballerina review: "Brilliant action, even if the plot gives you a sense of déjà vu"
  3. 3
    Karate Kid: Legends review: "Better than Karate Kid (2010), nothing on Karate Kid (1984)"
  4. 4
    Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning review: "Wraps up this spy franchise in spectacular style with Tom Cruise in peak condition, even if its villain lacks terror"
  5. 5
    Final Destination Bloodlines Review: "Meticulous murderous mayhem"
  1. Rebecca Romijn as Una Chin-Riley / Number One and Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
    1
    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 review: "The show's most assured run of episodes to date"
  2. 2
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 8 spoiler review: 'The Reality War' is "a mix of the good, the bad, and the truly baffling"
  3. 3
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 7 spoiler review: 'Wish World' is "an exciting and ambitious" start to the season finale, with hints of WandaVision
  4. 4
    Rick and Morty season 8 review: "Largely plays it too safe after years of crossing boundaries"
  5. 5
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 6 spoiler review: 'The Interstellar Song Contest' is "a blast and sets the stage for a thrilling season finale"

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers
  • Do not sell or share my personal information

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...