Saturday, May 25, 2013

The Xbox One to Destroy Them All

(Photo Courtesy of CNET)

Everyone and their mother is talking about the Xbox One for good reason. I won't go into the details myself, but here's my ultimate review of it. I'm not sure if I'm going to get it, for a long list of reasons. I'm going to hit the high points that rang out to me during the presentation.

- Xbox One has no intention of being backwards compatible
For me, that ruins it damn near automatically. Within the first two generations, some consoles have been backwards compatible and then stopped or weren't backwards compatible and changed to be so. Xbox One has no intention whatsoever of being backwards compatible. President of Microsoft’s Xbox Division Don Mattrick calls it "backwards thinking". Oooh, man.

- Xbox One charges a fee to reuse a game.
Don't do this to me; I love my secondhand games. This is how I ultimately get my fix, man. For me, I love physical copies of games, and I can understand the appeal in moving everything over digitally. The thing is though, Microsoft is going to charge you for the game no matter what the medium. Say you, the consumer, by Halo 65: The Full Reach of Cortana's Arbiter's Rage for full retail price. If you loan it to a friend to play the game, you can't. Right now, it seems as though your friend would have to buy the license to pay the game, which is currently speculated to be full-retail. Say you sell your copy of Halo 65 because it wasn't good, and some Halo Jarhead buys the used copy for, meh, $15 at GameStop. On top of buying your used copy, they still have to pay the full license fee. See the problem?

- Xbox One shuts down game developers.
It'd be hard for you to self-publish a game on Xbox One. For me, publishing my games would be a dream, but with this news, I wouldn't think of allowing Microsoft anywhere near my projects. Unlike the PS Network or Wii Universe, Microsoft requires that indie game developers publish their content under strict stipulations and contracts set up by Microsoft. If you don't do it, you can't market on their network—it's as simple as that.

And finally, the biggest tizzy—the biggest overture of "you must have lost your damn mind",

- Xbox One is Big Brother.
Kinect is always on, always listening, always watching. This sounds like the plot point to some dystopian action film. Alas, it'll be right in our own living rooms. Xbox One Kinect is always connected and functioning even when the main console is off. From the way they've been treating the connect, it's its own separate entity now—basically, it's another console. It can stream TV; it can monitor who's in the room. Yeah, it doesn't have a sensor anymore. Kinect is straight up equipped with a camera. It can monitor how many people are in a room, which can be pricey for you. If you're watching a movie with two other friends and a third walks in, the movie will pause and order you to pay a fee for the additional viewer. Currently that's a feature speculation, but that's what's out there right now.

If you want to read the full no-nos about Xbox One, you can read a rather information tumblr post here. All over, I had no real problems with Xbox. I'm more of a PS person myself, but I love myself some Xbox when it counts. I like the playful, non-serious debates over gaming platforms, but honestly, I don't care; I'm in it for the joy of gaming.

This, however, is a big ass no on my list. I have no real intentions of buying an Xbox One in the foreseeable future. This just flat out stomps on everything I enjoy and goes straight for my wallet. Microsoft, you can have that; I want none of it.

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