How are we, Team? It’s been awhile, far longer than I’d care to admit, but regrettably I had some personal business to attend to, but I’m back, and ready to guide you all in the war against the corrupt gaming industry. Today’s topic, I feel, is one that needs to be addressed, and with the upcoming Quantum Break I can think of no better time, so enough of this soup and salad chat, let’s dive right into the meaty course of the conversation, as a family.

It’s true that consoles will use titles exclusive to their machines to sell machines. If you want to win a war, you want something that the opposing factions can’t compete with. This is a universal truth, and having come up with multiple universal truths, I think I’m kind of an expert on them. The overall appeal of a console is defined by the hardware, but almost as important as the proverbial heat the console is packing is the proverbial ammo it’s loaded with. This is a concept I fully agree with. Yes, I am all for gaming segregation. Now before you grab your torch and pitchforks I want to make it clear that while I WANT to support integration in gaming, I feel that for the Greater Good and in order to maintain the Natural Order, gaming segregation is essential.

Picture your high school days. Remember back to the various cliques and social hierarchy that instinctively took play without provocation. The rich athletes bonded together, the wayward outcast huddled in the stairwell, the skaters stowed away behind the dumpster to smoke, and the rednecks were spitting the dip in the parking lot. No one told them this was the natural order of things, no one told them that this was how life was, herding together with like minded individuals for safety, completely disregarding the social ranking of their cliques. So how does this relate to gaming? Well, clearly The PC Master Race would fill the niche of your “popular” or “prep” class, mounting the social pyramid with undeniable eminence, the Xbox appeals do your more rugged types, your first person shooters, those guys who play league kickball, but don’t participate in school sports, you know the type, and finally Playstation rounds out the artistic types and the A.V. Club. While more sensitive in terms of character, their intelligence is superior to the Xbox owner, but their natural order in the universe prevents them from achieving the greatness of the PC gamer. This is how it has always been, and this is how it must be for the sake of the world.

“But, Jareth, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all co-existed not as contending factions, but as unified whole striving towards the same goal,” you ask, head hung heavy in contemplation.”

No, cherished reader, no it wouldn’t. Picture if you would the high school paradigm if you were to remove the walls of social structure. The A.V. Club president dating the lead cheerleader, the star quarterback skipping 4th period to grab a smoke with the social misfits, the de-facto leader of the rednecks helping the editor of the school newspaper change a tire. Sounds good, at first. Now imagine later in life, those people would be unable to function in society. They’d have grown complacent in basic social survival skills the rest of the world would have developed. That quarterback would lose his shot at a scholarship because of his smoking habit, the lead cheerleader would get a job as a model and face public humiliation if her husband didn’t portray the same public image of beauty that she did. We’d be setting these people up to fail right from the start. Then we’d have a generation of people who will become hollow shells, beaten by a world they weren’t prepared for. That’s a world I don’t want to see, team, and it’s for that reason that I say console exclusive titles must stay exclusive.

That brings me to the game that started this conversation, Quantum Break. As is common knowledge now, pre-orders for Xbox One will receive a free copy for PC, and this is all well and good. This is acceptable because Microsoft has something that Sony doesn’t. They have a computer operating system. Remember when I said that in war you want something that your enemies don’t have a response to? This isn’t just a nice gesture to Microsoft loyals, it’s a tactical strike against the opposition. What would happen if Quantum Break is made accessible to all consoles? Microsoft loses a strategic advantage, Sony doesn’t have to come up with some clever way to respond, and this could potentially stagnate the market. Console exclusive not only keep the world in balance, they create a competitive market pushing game and console creators to always go beyond what they have previously established, to always strive to do better than the competition.

So next time you want to complain about the next console exclusive you won’t be able to experience ask yourself this: Would playing this game really be worth the death of ever advancing gaming, is a Microsoft and/or Playstation game REALLY worth throwing the world into utter turmoil? Or is it better to accept your place, and prepare to hype the next exclusive your chosen platform releases.