If you keep thinking about all the Halo-esque good gaming experiences you will get from your console, then you have a close emotional bond to your console - an emotional loyalty or experiential loyalty.

According to marketing and business people, this is the strongest kind of loyalty there is because it's the hardest to break. Other companies have to work hard because they have to break the strong bond between you and your current console (including your console's games and your console's company). Just look at how Microsoft has to work really hard to convince the Japanese to buy the Xbox 360, and just look at how the Sony PS2 fanbase spills over to the PS3.

The key to this kind of loyalty is proving that the customer comes first. If something broke in your console and the company fixed it right away for free (and the lady who answered your questions on the customer help line was very friendly), then chances are you've given your heart and soul to that company (remember how GameJew wrote 40 songs about the Nintendo Wii?).

Many gamers with emotional loyalty have an exclusive loyalty to their console. It will take a lot of effort to convince them to try another console because the emotional and mental bond isn't there.

By the way, this is why we at QJ cringe every time we hear stories of how a company messes up its customer service, gets into a negative corporate activity or lawsuit, or releases a buggy game. Bad experiences cause the opposite effect: emotional hatred. As a related example, there's a game developer that "always" releases buggy games (I'm not going to say who because I don't want to rub off my bias on you guys). Even though I play that publisher's games and write positive QJ articles about that publisher's games, I will never be caught buying a game from that publisher.

The second kind of gamer loyalty is not exclusive - it's universal. If you're loyal to your console because you think it's an expression of the kind of person your are, then you have identity loyalty. It's like how people buy clothes that express who they are: "coolness" or "athleticism" or "rebellion" or "goth"... Well, in this case people buy a console because that console represents "gaming."

This kind of loyalty is not very exclusive because chances are the gamer will buy related or similar products. Just look at the older hardcore gamer - he or she plans to get the Xbox 360, PS3, and the Wii because each of the three consoles represent something: things like immersive gameplay, a thriving online community, admirable graphics, innovative gameplay... the gamer thinks that all of these things are important aspects of his or her life. When asked different questions in a survey, the hardcore gamer chooses a different console. It's not a one-console mentality.

Another example is a family that owns a console because playing together is part of their family identity. Chances are they'll buy a second console that will let them play together.

This is the loyalty that causes flame wars. If gamers "know" or "have been fooled into thinking" that their consoles are superior because they have features that other consoles don't have, then we say that these gamers have differentiation loyalty.

The crazy thing is that this kind of loyalty is the easiest to break. For example, if a gamer is proud of a console's graphics, then that gamer gets upset when other people talk about the higher-def graphics of another console.

In other words, if another company proves their console is better (or even if the company just fooled that gamer into thinking that another console is better because of all the media hype, advertising, and pretty packaging), then that gamer is likely to switch consoles.

• Emotional loyalty means you praise the good jobs and gripe against corporate mistakes. After all, if a console has a game with choppy substandard graphics in its the demo kiosk, or if an accessory doesn't work as promised, or if a part breaks too easily... well, those are noob-ups worth reporting. That's not console-bashing, that's honest reporting, right?
  
• Identity loyalty means avoiding becoming an exclusive fanboy for just one console. If comments tell us that a certain article was just pointless console-bashing, we really punish the writer (and the others shun him - shun... shun the unbeliever... shunnnn...) and we sometimes take down the article.
  
• Differentiation loyalty means we realize that we live in exciting next-gen times and we should focus on how each console contributes to the gaming industry (and sometimes messes up - but really, we do try to look at the happy side of things).
  

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