Sunday, June 23, 2013

My Thoughts on: The Xbox One and Consoles In-general

So E3 happened, big news came out, Sony and Microsoft made there bids into the 8th Generation with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. When you pile up all the announcements of features and upcoming games it comes to no surprise that the PS4 reveal trampled over the one for the Xbox One. But besides simple mindless console fandom, what's the real reason why more people are hesitant to buy the Xbox One?

One issue consumers would like cleared up concerns the built-in Kinect camera that NEVER shuts off. Its always on, always functioning, and apparently is being used by companies and or the government. Think about it! even if you were to pass the room where the Xbox One is, once that Kinect detects that you're in the room its on and on for good. While that's a big concern, it's not as huge as the announcement as Microsoft's plan to remove used games or swapping games. They have announced a system that declares that once you buy a fresh copy of a game for your console it can only be registered and played on your console. It cannot by traded (or swapped at an exorbitant price) with someone else to play on that person's console. So just keep that in mind... Anytime you want a new Xbox One game you have to buy a new Xbox One game. (And at 60 dollars per game that's something most of us aren't willing to do)

Its moves like this where companies lose me as a consumer; I mean you get a console with the most pointless peripheral ever, built in to the console, it never shuts off and it sends all of you're data to advertisers, the government, or God-knows anybody else. A tracking system that will make sure you play your Xbox One game on your Xbox One console. And then you wanna us as consumers to pay 500 dollars and then some on some Privacy-Defying, Game-controlling console. (No thanks) Microsoft is making all the mistakes Apple is making; and should hope that their consumers are just as blissfully ignorant. For everyone else though; everyone's eyes, ears, & money is on the internet ready, user friendly PlayStation 4.

But let's be honest, console & game companies have been wanting to do this for a while. They see the money they could be making from advertisements or from not buying used games, and say "Hey we could make money from that!" One of the big de-factos about both PS4 & XB1 is that neither console is backwards compatible. While that's a drawback to both consoles lets me just clear something up

  • Gamecube wasn't backwards compatible with N64 games or earlier nintendo games
  • Dreamcast didn't play Sega Saturn Games
  • The 360 and PS3 compatibility only worked for a few Xbox/PS2 & PS1 games
Backwards compatiblity is not that much of a loss, and compared to what we've been hammered with its might be the least of our problems. But what do you think? Are you still Team Xbox? or are you team PlayStation? Or do you feel like there's any difference? Let me hear from you in the comment section.



Team Xbox





Team PlayStation   


Here's the link to the article


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