The console wars have begun. Ok, they’ve been ongoing for years, and many would argue that battles of words have been waged pretty continuously for months now, but they only just got to South Park, and just in time for Black Friday! Winter is coming and you must choose a side. Are you a Playstation person or an Xbox person? You might want to figure that out, if you haven’t already, considering the PS4 and Xbox One are both set to arrive in the coming weeks. Last night’s episode of South Park ("Black Friday") addressed this war, merging Game of Thrones with Game of Consoles, spoofing gamer culture a bit, much in the way they did back during the World of Warcraft episode.
Before I get to the highlights, if you haven’t seen the episode, Comedy Central has the full video posted here. Spoilers from the episode ahead!
It all started with the kids of South Park uniting in an effort to get to the front of the line at the mall on Black Friday — the popular day-after-Thanksgiving shopping day — where a massive discount was being given out to the first people who make it through the door. Cartman was, as is often the case, leading this charge. Only he hasn’t anticipated what would happen once they all started talking about which console they were going to get:
And the group divides, as some people — Stan included, he prefers the PS4 controller — want PS4’s, while others want Xboxes. Is it better to have a seamless transition between games, movies and TV? Or is a touchpad interface on the controller better?
As the war wages on, with Stan and Cartman each trying to rally other cliques to their cause, Playstation manages to sweeten the pot with some added incentives for PS4 purchases, including the option to preorder Metal Gear Solid 5:
“When you preorder a game, you’re just committing to paying for something some assholes in California haven’t even finished working on yet! You know what you get for pre-ordering a game? A big dick in your mouth.”
Who will win this battle? We don’t actually know. The episode left off with the war just getting revved up, which hopefully means this is a to-be-continued situation. Either way, I’m predicting that no one gets game consoles and they all end up with “Stop Touching Me Elmos”
South Park airs Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
