I prefer, when possible, to play all games from a series on one platform and I don't really know why.

When I was a kid gaming was a lot more compartmentalized than it is today. You had your Nintendo games, your Sega games, and your PC games and while there were a fair number of games that did come to multiple platforms there was generally one lead platform that the game "belonged" on. You could play Sim City on your Super Nintendo but everyone knew it was really a PC franchise.

This mostly held true through my teenage years. Yes games started coming out on more and more platforms over time and a lot of third party games started coming out on multiple platforms by the PS1/Saturn/N64 era but, again, a lot of them felt like inferior ports made for people who only had one system. Nobody would play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the N64 if you could play it on the PlayStation and Rayman 2 was clearly better on N64 (though Dreamcast was best of all.)

By the time the Xbox/Gamecube/PS2 generation came along there were fewer exclusives than ever and the differences between different versions were also smaller than ever. Some games ran better on Xbox (or even Gamecube) but for the most part PS2 was the lead platform and the majority of ports were pretty good. This trajectory continued (bad PS3 ports in the early 7th gen notwithstanding) and at this point most games come out on everything and most console versions are so similar that reviews don't even bother to talk about comparisons unless there are significant differences. Yes the PC version of most games runs better than console versions (and sometimes has added effects like ray tracing or other stuff but for the most part the content is the same across platforms and the experience is very similar. Cross platform multiplayer is even getting more popular with developers as there is a tacit acknowledgment that all these systems are essentially variations on PC hardware and can play very nicely together. Sony and Microsoft have even taken to putting their "exclusive" games out on PC, making that more than ever the true master platform.

The thing is, I can't quite get over my old habits of thinking that certain games "belong" on certain platforms. Sometimes this makes some kind of sense. The Ori games are published by Microsoft so even though they're available on Switch they "feel" like Xbox games to me. Devil May Cry has always been a PlayStation franchise so that's where it feels like it belongs to me.

Sometimes it's just a function of where I started playing a particular series. I first played Shadow of Mordor on Xbox so that feels like an Xbox series to me, even though the PS4 game was technically superior and the PC version better than both. Part of it is just getting muscle memory with a particular controller and part of it is just an old way of thinking. It just feels strange to me to play part 1 on one system and part 2 on another. This is especially true regarding trophies and achievements, where it's nice to have a record of your time with a whole series all in one place.

This preference is not, of course, insurmountable. If a game is much cheaper on one system than another or if it has extra content I can handle jumping across. I played most of the Assassin's Creed games on Xbox but played Syndicate on PS4 because of the extra missions. Likewise for a huge performance difference I will jump ship. Final Fantasy is a PlayStation series for me (though obviously it started on Nintendo, and that platform jump caused a LOT of kerfuffle when it happened in the '90s) but Xbox Series X is a much better place to play FF XIII (to the extent that there is a good way to play that game). So it's not that I HAVE to play all games on one platform, it's just a preference.

I don't fully understand why I care about this at all. As with Final Fantasy there were certainly series that jumped in the past and I moved along with them. But it's definitely something that influences where I buy and play games. If I can keep it all on one platform without spending much more or sacrificing quality I will. I don't know if it's a unique preference or common, but it's there.

I think I see what you mean. I own almost all Sonic games and Star Wars games on PC, even though I have the option of owning them on other places. It feels nicer to have everything of a certain thing in one place.

i feel this ... just yesterday when i seen that yakuza gaiden was coming to gamepass i had that why am i sticking with PS as my system of choice with it feeling ... i have a pc that can play these games and even tho its coming to gamepass i'll probably not play it on my pc .. to me even tho its been multiplatform for a good while now it started as a PS exclusive series so at this point all the games except og 1&2 sit nice and pretty on my shelf ...to the point that i have a copy from play-asia ordered for this entry since the west isn't getting a physical edition. so now its do i risk the hand pain playing on my ps5 which i sorta hate ( tho i was mostly ok with ff16 by my suprise) or do i not wait n play via gamepass on pc with a more comfortable controller but feel weird cause i don't have trophies for it like every release since 3 .... its a very weird feeling. and its only 1 example

I have a ton of the Resident Evil games downloaded to my PS4 in their own folder called...Resident Evil.

You're mental, but I get it

For me, it's more of an organizational thing. I like organizing stuff. I like putting stuff in its proper place. I like looking at a neatly organized collection. My favorite console update is always the addition of folders. I've never really gotten the "this is a ______ series" feeling. I just want to be able to see it all together, in one place.

I still really like consoles, because I have nostalgic memories of them, but I still prefer the Assetto Corsa series on the PC, because its handling model appears to be optimized for PC plus its Sim Racing peripherals too.

Well, I still like the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport series, because I enjoyed them during my teenhood plus I was a controller pad user back then.

However, for some rhythm games like the Just Dance series, I prefer them on Nintendo Switch, because it can use JoyCon to play and dance with, plus more comfortable than what ever sort of peripherals/devices.

Edit: The cars in the Assetto Corsa series are harder to control than their counterparts in the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport series, due to less stability, traction, and ABS control, making them less forgiving plus more realistic too, overall, I prefer Assetto Corsa series more than the entire Gran Turismo & Forza Motorsport series.

I miss folders. One downside of the PS5.

Why did they have to get rid of that? Do designers feel they have a need to change stuff people liked? lol

@superslidetail: They didn't get rid of it, they rebuilt the PlayStation OS from the ground up (as opposed to Xbox who just ported the OS from XBONE to XBSS/X) and didn't include it because they were focusing on other, flashier, features like activities and hint cards, which to my knowledge nobody uses. Nintendo also didn't have folders on Switch for a LONG time after having them on other systems so it's just a feature that isn't a priority when consoles first come out, probably because they think people won't have a lot of games at first so won't need them (though with PS5 backwards compatibility that was a dumb thought.)

You don't sell systems based on having folders so they aren't a priority. That's one of the reasons flashy new stuff gets more attention than more useful features that have been around. They may also make people less likely to engage with the advertising and other stuff on the system because their stuff is better organized (so they are less likely to use the search feature, which offers up ads for PS store stuff along with games you own) so they may suppress revenue.

Sony isn't interested in maximizing your enjoyment they are interested in maximizing their revenue, so folders may not be useful for that purpose, and they build the OS for them, not for us. That's why we also get so many advertisements!

@bigsocrates: Yay, I love advertisements!

@superslidetail: Yes, see Excel getting rid of the menu bar options that were useful (and trying to pivot to the stupid ribbon), or all of Facebook's history, or Xbox 360 getting rid of the blades. Tinkerers can't stop tinkering.

@ginormous76: Excel has always been weirdly focused on its power users who really use all of the software's features rather than the majority who just scratch the surface, and the ribbon makes more sense for people who want to dig in and customize. I don't understand why they do this because I assume most of their revenue is from big companies just buying it so secretaries can make basic tables but it is what it is.

Xbox's switch from blades was not about novelty it was about advertising.

Sometimes it's just tinkerers changing stuff to change stuff (and that's awful) but often there's a more sinister reason. I fully believe that folders might be gone to try to get people to use the advertising laden search function more, though I have no proof.

I've usually had a sound reason for confining a series to a platform.

PES was always a Playstation thing to me because, before the PC ports surpassed them, the games were very modifiable. You could get option files for the PS2 onwards. The Xbox was too closed up.

@bigsocrates: That's an interesting theory. My coworkers and myself are power users of Excel and we all hated the change. We have Excel doing stuff that probably should be done in Python.