Monte Vista is home to a large gaming community, including a dedicated video game club. But what keeps this running are the video game platforms, consoles or computer systems that these games run on.
After conducting a survey to find the three most popular video game platforms at Monte Vista, though Playstation was preferred by 12% of participants, Xbox ultimately came on top for third place, favored by 12.8% of students.
“It’s [the Xbox console] easy and simple to use, and it’s not extremely expensive, said Cooper Redford, a sophomore at Monte Vista. “The controllers have good quality, and the storage is really good. The games run well no matter what model you have.”
Nintendo is next in the rankings, preferred by 21.6% of students. According to IGN, an online source for video game related news, Nintendo’s best selling console has been the Nintendo Switch, having sold one billion units of the console.
“I enjoy taking it [the Nintendo console] with me when I’m traveling and that I don’t need to have it attached to anything to enjoy it” Danielle Robinson, a Monte Vista junior, said when explaining why Nintendo was her favorite platform.
Indeed, Popular Science, a magazine that discusses science and technology, reveals that the Nintendo Switch owes its popularity to its ability to switch between home and handheld console, as well as offering an impressive games library.
Finally, for the most popular video game platform at Monte Vista, preferred by 26.4% of students, we have Steam. According to the Sacramento Bee, a newspaper covering Northern California, Steam is the most popular digital games platform in the world.
“Steam provides a plethora of games across many different genre[s],” Callen Kuwahara, a junior at Monte Vista, said. “That variety combined with their compatibility with multiple different gaming formats (keyboard+mouse, controller, VR, etc.) allows for a juggernaut in the gaming industry that encompasses almost every gamer’s taste.”
However, there is a bit more to consider when talking about one’s favorite video game platform.
Harry He, the senior who is the president of the Video Game Club, said that for different platforms there are “some programming languages” that people might use on a game. Additionally, sentimentality plays a role in this.
With the example of Nintendo, He said that “the Super Mario Bros Movie came out lately, a lot of people found that entertaining,” while people are already “passionate for Mario the character itself.”
Regardless of your stance on what’s the best platform, one thing is for certain—they all allow us to play the games we love. After all, our survey also found that 76% of students like playing video games. Now that’s a statistic to get behind.
