I'd like to think that I'm a relatively level-headed person. As a "journalist", I try to remain objective, even though sometimes I show a decided bias (diehard Nintendo fan here). I have a PS3, an XBox 360 and a Wii - I endorsed all the systems last generation. Somehow, even though I prefer Sony's exclusives more, and have a lifelong affiliation with Nintendo, I managed to get the majority of my games on Microsoft's system.
I'm thinking that they must have dumped some kind of hallucinogenic into my hardware, because I cannot fathom why I would be so stupid as to willingly make that move. You see...
Despite the XBox 360 offering a comfortable controller, I cannot remember the last time I had a 360 input device that wasn't wonky as hell. Perhaps the reason they pushed so hard for Kinect is because they knew the quality of their controllers had gone to hell. 50% of the time (and I'm being generous here), when I've stopped using the left analog stick, there's still a level of drift... my character's vision will slowly slide to one side of the screen. This isn't particular to one of my controllers, no. I specifically asked for a new one for my birthday last year, and the same thing happened. That's a controller. Arguably one of the most important devices used for playing a videogame.
But wait! What about the system. There have been shitty systems that have come out in the past, but I don't think anyone could argue that the quality of the hardware itself is worse than the XBox 360. We are talking, of course, about the Red Ring of Death. Despite the fact that meeheeheehillions of the damn system were infected with this ticking time bomb of gaming death, Microsoft still managed to crap out 70 million consoles this generation (and rising). When did we, as a society, decide to just bend over and take it? Is Halo really that good that you're willing to deal with that kind of douchebaggery?
Even if you don't have a RROD, there's still no guarantee you're going to have a perfectly functioning system. I bought a brand new game for my girlfriend for her birthday, and lo and behold, when the game was in the system, it could not be read. Of course, I'm the kind of schmuck that went out and bought a NEW 360 when they came out with the slimmer model. My reasoning was that they couldn't possibly have screwed up twice in a row. Well played, Microsoft. Well played.
That you can have a terrible console for an entire generation is baffling in and of itself. But thinking that you can follow up an actual disaster like the 360 with something as abysmally appealing as the X-Box One (hereby known as the xBone) is ludicrous.
Let me break down for you why anyone who picks up the system (at least at launch) is devoid of a speck of intelligence:
They've got their own little Patriot Act going on.
The Kinect is always on, always listening, always plotting against you. Microsoft even patented the ability to use the Kinect to calculate how many people were in a room so that they could block people from watching a movie or a television show - that's real, not some BS I just pulled out of my butt.
You no longer own your games.
Sure, you'll by a disc with a nice little box at retail, but all you're paying for is a long-term rental fee. You see, Microsoft is going to allow you to install "your" game to "your" system. Once it's there, though, you're at the whim of a company with historically bad decision-making skills (see RROD, above). If your internet happens to be out for longer than a 24 hour period, too bad, guess you won't be playing. Microsoft requires you to connect to the internet at least once per day.
And what about when Microsoft decides to close down its servers for the xBone? It's not as if it makes sense to keep a server open forever. I can't go back to Battlefield 2 and play online because those servers don't exist anymore. What this means for you is that your disc is nothing but a paperweight. All you're doing is licensing the ability to play a game - and that license expires when they say so.
Say goodbye to secondhand gaming.
Very much in the vein of the previous qualm I have is that these discs that you pick up won't even work for you the way they do today. If I bought a game today, and brought it to your house, we could play it, because it is mine, and I do what I want.
Microsoft would prefer to change the way any business has ever worked, ever. When you buy a used car, you pay the current owner. You don't pay the original manufacturer, because they had nothing to do with your transaction, and that's a stupid idea. You'll go to them (in one form or another) if you need maintenance or repairs.
I digress. For the xBone, if you buy Halo 5, and play it on your system, it is installed directly into your system. You don't even need the disc at this point. But what if Halo 5 sucks, and you decide to trade it in for a much better game (on a system that won't rob you blind)? The next person who picks up the game, for a smaller amount of money than you spent, gets to walk out of the store with a receipt for a game, a disc, and if they are lucky, a box. Then, when they put the game in their system, a message pops up. They're required to pay a fee to play that game in addition to what they just spent at the store. That is not the way used merchandise works, and if we don't put our feet down and tell companies what we think, then we deserve to be robbed.
Of course, used gaming isn't the only form of secondhand gaming. Rental systems still exist out there. And hell, what if you want to lend a game to a friend. Sorry, friend. You can't play that game until you pay that fee, even though you have the disc.
Say goodbye to the last seven years of gaming.
Unless you don't want to trade in your 360, of course.
Since the Playstation 2 came out, we've been used to the idea of backwards compatibility. It's nice to be able to begin a new console generation with the entire catalog of the previous generation's games to bolster it. The xBone will not allow you to play 360 titles. More shockingly, you can't even carry over your Xbox live Arcade purchases.
This is the kind of bone-headed decision that executives should get fired for making. The only saving grace made from this choice is that Microsoft will feel the pain of eliminating their back-catalog. They're not doing to hot with indie developers right now either, so they have to rely on big studios to push content on their system, and, especially recently, those games aren't coming out as quickly as they used to.
The saddest thing is that there are people out there, who don't work for the company, who actively resist seeing all these things as bad things. You have your blind fanboys who will rage up and down the internet at anyone who tries to point out this foolish abomination that is the xBone.
At this point in time, Microsoft is too far along to shift gears. They've just spent $1 Billion on exclusives, and we don't even know the price of this beta-max doppelganger. They've made exclusive deals with various companies, not the least of which is the NFL.
Don Mattrick presented the system to an audience with a smile on his face. That can mean only one of two things. Either he thinks we're a bunch of idiots who will throw our money to the wind for a system that you can watch TV on (where else can I do that? Oh yeah, my TV!), or, Microsoft is an idiot for thinking they can get one over on us.
Let's show them that it's the latter.
Bonus: Everything that happened during the xBone reveal.
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