End of the Console Wars: Behind the Scenes of GameStop’s Back-and-Forth with Trump

Even ardent critics have praised those efforts, but now Trump earns the adulation of a different, often overlooked, demographic: the gamers. The president just took credit for ending “the console wars.”

Then the White House posted a picture of the president in cartoon power armor on the South Lawn during an extended back-and-forth over the weekend that drew tens of millions of views online with the beloved video game retailer GameStop.

“It’s one of these moments that you never think could happen, and it does happen in this crazy timeline we live in,” a source familiar with GameStop social media told RealClearPolitics. “But no matter the administration, you’re going to be excited for the White House to acknowledge your brand.”

“MGGA,” the company said in a statement to RCP, an abbreviation for “Make Gaming Great Again” and a play on Trump’s MAGA slogan. “Video games and shitposting,” the company said, “bring us all together.”

It is the latest unexpected development in the second Trump season, the continuation of an unprecedented political-cultural moment. The conflict in question has not led to real bloodshed, but it has divided friend groups across basements and dorm rooms since the turn of the millennium. The often caffeine-addled, sometimes juvenile, combatants: Team Xbox and Team PlayStation. The casus belli? The first-person shooting game “Halo.”

The cartoon super-soldier known as “Master Chief” could only protect humanity from alien threats on an Xbox. And while players without that gaming system were left out of the fun for two decades, keeping the wildly popular sci-fi franchise exclusive was a savvy business decision that generated billions of dollars for Microsoft on the back of Xbox sales. But then that company went and did something unexpected.

They announced that they would re-release un updated version of the original Halo, and for the first time, they would make it available on the Sony PlayStation, Microsoft’s biggest competitor. The news rocked the industry with the New York Times likening the move to “letting Mickey Mouse roam Universal Studios.” In this way the Berlin Wall of video games came down.

Enter GameStop.

“For the past two decades, the global gaming community has been engaged in an ongoing and increasingly petty feud known as The Console Wars. Said conflict originated in the early 2000s with the release of Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox-exclusive title. Halo: Campaign Evolved is officially coming to PlayStation in 2026 with cross-platform play,” the retailer, akin to a Blockbuster but for video games, wrote in a tongue-in-cheek press release, declaring its stores would continue to operate as “demilitarized zones.”

Enter the White House.

The Trump rapid response account then shared the Game Stop post, writing “NUMBER 9: President Trump presides over the end of the 20-year Console Wars,” a reference to the very real wars that Trump has helped end or prevent.

Enter GameStop ... again.

Sensing an opportunity, the company’s social media team then shared a grainy image of Master Chief shaking Trump’s hand in what appears to be the Oval Office (a good-natured source close to the gaming retailer jokingly cautioned that the photo may be AI-generated). After the White House shared an image of Trump as Master Chief on the South Lawn, complete with an energy sword, from their official account, the GameStop social media team pulled out all the stops.

They posted an image of the president as the alien-slaying super-soldier and photo-shopped the face of Vice President JD Vance over the normally buxom female character known as Cortana.

“I made sure to give Vance a more masculine presence,” a GameStop source involved in the memes told RCP, adding that they hope the VP will find the photo-shop funny “like everyone else.”

A spokesman for Vance did not return RCP’s request for comment. The White House, meanwhile, enjoyed the moment. “Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch – only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players and that leader is Donald J. Trump,” said Kush Desai, a spokesman for the president.

All of it may be a fleeting moment in the digital ether, but video game sales in the last decade have outpaced sales in the film, television, and music industries. And while that demographic may not vote on the strength of memes alone, the majority seem to be in on the joke. Just like the White House.