According to which gamers? I'm a gamer that definitely doesn't agree with that. Many people just in this thread have posted that they don't agree with it either.

There will of course be groups of people that prefer The Witcher 3 and vice versa, but when it comes to being the king, I'm looking at three things:

1. Critically, Skyrim scored better than The Witcher 3 according to both MetaCritic and GameRankings.

2. In terms of mainstream popularity among gamers, Skyrim sold far more than The Witcher 3 just in it's original run and even it's remasters continue to receive very impressive sales.

3. Why are all open world RPGs still being compared to Skyrim even 8 years after it's release? If The Witcher 3 had truly dethroned it then Skyrim should no longer be the game that every new open world RPG inevitably gets compared to, but yet it still is. That speaks volumes for how large of a shadow Skyrim still casts over this genre.

I disagree. I don't think The Witcher 3 holds a candle to Skyrim, especially when it comes to being an open world RPG. The Witcher 3's strength is it's narrative, but Skyrim has the better open world and Skyrim has the better RPG elements, thus Skyrim is the better open world RPG.

And if you want to compare scores, Skyrim has the higher professional Metacritic scores. I personally don't think scores really matter much though. I think the far more telling thing is the shadow that Skyrim continues to cast even after 8 years. The Witcher 3 is a much newer game yet people still go back to the much older Skyrim and whenever a new open world RPG gets released, it still gets compared to Skyrim. The fact that these things continue to occur even though Skyrim is twice as old as The Witcher 3 tells me that The Witcher 3 failed to dethrone Skyrim and thus Skyrim is still holding the crown for king of the open world RPG.

The real question is why has no open world game managed to dethrone Skyrim?

Even after nearly 8 years (twice as long as The Witcher 3), Skyrim is still being played regularly by lots of people and it is still the open world game that all other open world RPG games, including The Witcher 3, inevitably gets compared to. The fact that all open world RPG games still have to get compared to Skyrim means that Skyrim is still the king of open world RPG games.

I don't know why I'm going to respond to such a fanboy thread with a serious answer, but I will...

-Many people consider the Xbox controller to be far better than the Playstation controller.

-For anybody that cares a lot about online gaming, Xbox Live is the gold standard for online gaming.

-Some people like the type of exclusives that the Xbox One has and don't give a damn if they are also available on PC because they prefer to play on a console.

-Some people don't care about the type of exclusives that dominate the PS4's library (i.e. Movie-games and JRPGs).

-It offers backwards compatiblity with the Xbox 360's fantastic library of games. Even some original Xbox games too.

-The Xbox One makes for a great Ultra HD Blu-ray player which no other console offers.

-The Xbox One X is the most powerful console on the market.

Calling it a port is unfair to it. The plot is mostly the same and it has a few other similarities, but the levels are mostly different. It's also a much more challenging game which I like about it.

I personally think that it is underrated and gets a bad reputation just because at the time of it's release, people wanted it to either be Rondo of Blood or in the same style as Super Castlevania, but it was neither of those things. Since then, people that haven't even played it just assume that it is bad because of the reputation that it got for not being the game that people expected it to be at the time of it's release.

Is it as great as Rondo of Blood? No, but I think that it is better than more than half of the games that are being included in this collection and I'm disappointed that it's not in the collection.

Bloodlines is decent but far from the best. I think that most people that call it the best are people that only had Sega consoles growing up so they want to feel that the one Castlevania game that they got is the best.

Bloodlines was very lacking in the horror atmosphere compared to the other Classic Castlevania games, it had really bad sound effects that are by far the worst sound effects of any of the Classic Castlevania games, and it did not feel like a true Castlevania game either.

Why the hell is Simon's Quest, Kid Dracula, and The Adventure on here but not the best game in the series, Rondo of Blood?

I don't know if I'm going to buy it or not. On one hand, I'm disappointed with the selection of games and the lack of physical version. On the other hand, I kind of want to support it just to show Konami that there is a market for these games so that they might decide to make a new one.

Whoever is stupid enough to attempt it first will lose a lot of customers, so the only way that they could survive the backlash would be if they all came to an agreement that they would all go 100% digital at the same time which seems unlikely.

And if Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo did all come to an agreement to go 100% digital at the same time then that would create an opportunity for a new competitor to come in with a physical media console to appeal to all of the disgruntled gamers that would be upset.

Having no physical media is a deal breaker for me. I won't buy a console that doesn't offer physical media. Period. I would buy the competing console that does offer physical media instead.

I'm hopeful that all of the console makers understand that they would face a huge backlash if they went 100% digital with no physical media option and that their competitors could then take advantage of it and market that they still offer physical media to easily steal all of their pissed off customers. Hopefully, this fear will keep them all in check and prevent any one of them from trying to go 100% digital for a very long time.

As long as Xbox continues to offer physical media, I will buy the next Xbox console since I have always preferred to play multiplats on Xbox due to it's better controller and better online service and I doubt that will change.

I used to buy Playstation consoles too for their exclusives, but Sony is too obsessed with movie-games that I don't give a damn about nowadays and no longer offer me any exclusives that appeal to me anymore. So unless Sony starts focussing on more than just movie-games, the PS5 will be the first Playstation console that I do not ever buy.