A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The Console War looks like it might end in a cautious truce, and as the dwindling flamewars of last gen burn themselves to ash, I can only hope that the divide between the new generation of console fans will be so broad that the different camps won’t even bother fighting anymore.

With Microsoft’s unveiling of the Xbox One, all of the “Big Three” console makers have officially gone in different directions. Microsoft is about multimedia and dominating your living room entertainment; Sony is about high-horsepower gaming; and Nintendo is firmly about doing its own thing, even if it isn’t quite sure what that means.

I remember one of the first shots fired in the console war, back in 2006. When Alex Navarro (who is consistently my favorite contributor on GB and was a highlight of the now essentially defunct Screened.com) posted his Madden 2007 review for PS3 on Gamespot, he opened by insisting that there was NO REASON to buy the PS3 version over the already-existing Xbox 360 version, and made several more similar comments throughout. Writing his review this way was perhaps inescapable due to two very similar consoles launching only a couple months apart and with many of the same games. However, that one otherwise innocuous review offered a nearly prophetic glimpse into a console cycle dominated by picayune graphical comparisons, comment section flamewars, and the worst thing by far to come out of the console war, Metacritic.

<Rant Alert!> If you can’t tell how a professional game reviewer feels about a particular game without looking at the number at the top of the review, one of you isn’t trying hard enough. More importantly, with all due respect to said professional reviewers, their aggregate review scores should NEVER determine whether a studio lives or dies, or whether developers get paid adequately for their time. </rant>

This gen was just as defined by brand loyalty as the old Nintendo/Sega days, except that back then video games really WERE played mostly by children, who could be forgiven for being so childish. But as fundamentally silly as it is, brand loyalty sold a lot of boxes this gen, and was often the only real distinction gamers had between high profile releases. That is unless you count the graphical comparisons, which always made mountains of graphical traits no one would ever see without high-tech recording equipment, such as: “The PS3 version has a slight blurring effect from the QAA but runs with full v-sync, while the 360 version has sharper textures but suffers from screen tearing.” And then 250 comments would follow, full of bile and a few unconsciously xenophobic remarks, occasionally broken by an equally moronic “PC is the master race” post, another unfortunate trend of the console wars.

But now that all three consoles have been revealed, I have real hope that the console war will just moodily piss itself out. Because there is no reason to fight anymore. No two consoles are going for the same slice of the market. Let’s take a little quiz to demonstrate.

1. I want my games to...

a. …make my eyes bleed with more pixels than there are grains of sand in the Sahara and let me play as spunky/disconsolate teens with inventive clothing and ever-more impossible hairstyles. Also, Japan is f*%@ing awesome.

b. …showcase new twists on the formulae that continue to make games great after 30 years, coupled with perfectly tuned controls. Also, Japan is f*%@ing kawaii.

c. …star shiny mo-capped versions of the same dudes I watch on ESPN, except that when I’M playing, my team always wins, plus America wins every war it starts. Thanks to me. Also, f*%@ Japan.

d. …be pretty much the same as a. and c., but further justify my $1200 SLI video cards with a super-kewl physics engine that individually renders each strand of Lara Croft’s hair. Also, why the f*%@ can you not buy Dark Souls on Steam in Japan?

Okay, so I’m having fun with stereotypes, but note, there was a lot more crossover between answer a. and answer c. with the PS3 and 360 than there seems to be with PS4 and Xbox One, at least so far. Sure, there will be sports games on PS4, and there will be flowy Japanese games on Xbox One, but neither camp believes that’s who they really ARE anymore. In fact, everyone—MS, Sony, and Nintendo—have dug very clear trenches between themselves and their competitors coming into the next gen, giving us all hope that the console war can, at last, go away.

So let’s have no more snarky tweets from Major Nelson and Jack Tretton. No more “Sega does what Ninten-don’t!” Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are all doing something different now. Let’s, as gamers and fans, be glad such rich diversity exists in our shared hobby. If the big dogs have matured enough to realize and admit who they really are, then we gamers can do the same.

In short, the war is over, and the only losers are people who want to keep fighting.