As someone who's Xbox 360 has been my main platform of gaming since 2006 I should be really excited today, but really not at all, in fact I am quite depressed about the future of gaming. I have had 2 Xbox's since 2006 and brought one the day my first Xbox died out of warranty I have a gamerscore of over 50k from games I have brought brand new, that is 5000 dollars of games I have brought on the 360, which I have to pay a premium(80-90USD) for each new release because of my location on this planet. Here's my thoughts on a few of the key talking points.
Has to be online once every 24 hours?
Conflicting reports but if it is true, as someone who has gone though various jobs and houses over my time. I don't always have enough money to get internet or sometimes it takes weeks to get internet installed into a new place, but I have always made sure to have enough money for games over internet. I have many friends that can't afford internet, but that didn't stop them from buying a console new this generation and most of their games new as well, instead of buying internet each month they saved their money for games as their luxury for the month, so you are just not selling this console to these people now? I have always brought my games new, I have never brought a pre owned game from a game store this generation, I give my money to the game industry so why are they being so anti-consumer to a loyal consumer over the past 7 years?
Can't trade games around with friends
Again another aggressive DRM policy that should not be on a gaming console with the "pre-owned fee", as a kid I made a lot of friends in primary school from trading around games with friends and subsequently talking about them, in these years I received games like Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Chrono Trigger, Soul Reaver from trading my games around with friends. I feel like this part of gaming is really gone now for the future generations of kids. Without trading games or renting I would of played and owned 4 games on my Playstation 1, WWF Warzone, Crash Bandicoot 3, Tekken 2 and Porshe Challenge. I would of missed out on a lot of classics and it probably wouldn't of turned me into the gamer that I am today without experiencing Final Fantasy VII over the summer break in exchange for my copy of Porsche Challenge, poor guy...
TV
I was actually quite impressed by this part, I love my sports and seeing Fantasy Teams being incorporated live into your viewing experience had me super excited as someone that love Fantasy Football (soccer) and Fantasy NRL (Rugby League), but hey I live in New Zealand and I have no chance of any of these things coming to my market in the next 10 years, I can't even get Netflix over here. The only really way to watch new relase movies legally is buying\renting them on Bluray, we are far behind from this streaming industry America has, even though we have decent internet infrastructure with fibre network being rolled out now. I'm not sure about multi tasking with a gaming console, sure it would be cool to watch sports in PIP mode while playing some tedious gaming activities like grinding up in Final Fantasy XIII, I am more concerned that all this memory being used to enable these 3 OS's to be running could instead be used on games.
Backwards Compatibility
It's cool but expected that achievements will carry over, but no backwards compatibility is honestly quite a shock to me. With the Xbox being a lot closer architectural to a PC than the PS3, I really thought this may be the one thing Microsoft would have on Sony. Not being able to play Xbox Live Arcade games is the real bummer here, much like a good SNES game these 2D platformers like SplosionMan and Trials would really stand the test of time, I really wish they would learn something from the PC on this, I can still play Kings Quest on my PC and that game is from the 80's, it is really destroying the history of console games just leaving them behind on unsupported systems. But I think I have figured out a way around this, if the HDMI in can be used with any device surely I can plug my 360 into the Xbox One and just use the TV option as my 360, sure I'll have to have them both on to play a 360 game but with limited HDMI ports in my receiver it is probably a logical way of doing it.
Friends
Microsoft announced that the friends list limit is being raised to 1000, that's cool I guess but does that mean I will be getting "Player 2 is Online" pop up every 5 seconds if theoretically I had 1000 friends, I seriously think Microsoft needs to learn something from Facebook on this, for example being able to group your friends list into different categories like having a close friends list, so you only get online notifications from this group of people, while still being able to message and give invites to the rest of your friends list that maybe you play a game with every year or so. Also with this "trending" tab added to the UI, it would also be cool to be able to have a "following" section of the friends list similar to Twitter, for example you could add the Giant Bomb crew's gamertags, where you would be able to see what they are playing, what's trending with them and view their saved gameplay clips.
Kinect
I regrettably brought a Kinect when it launched, sure I played it for 2 weeks then never again, it just didn't work without me moving couches and coffee tables. I sold it later after it started collecting dust in my closet, nothing about what I like about gaming or gaming consoles involves something like Kinect, no I don't want to talk to my TV, my neighbours will think I'm a crazy man hearing me talk to my Xbox though the thin walls, "GO HOME XBOX". Why do gestures to do actions that simple button presses will do, the Kinect was optional, so why not include a bare bones option, that has no DVR or Kinect for people that just want to game, why incorporate Kinect as one of the main compulsory features of your device? Especially when the price is being jacked up at least 100 bucks with the inclusion of those things.
PS4
I'm really sceptical that Sony isn't going down this road as well, if Sony had none of this DRM built in I'm sure they would have flaunted it any chance they got today, but I am placing my bets that with EA dropping online passes all together that PS4 is doing this as well. They are being smart letting Microsoft take the hit from the public from announcing the DRM first, then as the public uproar starts to die down they will drop their DRM policy at E3 in the back page of some press release is my guess. But hopefully I am wrong, I will gladly change ship back to Sony next generation. Also looking back at Sony's reveal now, it is very evident the audience they are going after is gamers, I know this conference was meant for mass market consumption in the USA and they will be showing a lot of exclusives at E3 but still Sony started their conference with Mark Cerney breaking down everything in very layman's terms, they said what the specifications meant for gamers in a very straight forward way, all Microsoft seemed to talk about was buzzwords like "magic", "amazing", "mind blowing". All they had to do was show a dude on the stage playing a pre-recorded clip of gameplay with a controller in hand, even the COD developer said they were about to show gameplay before playing a trailer, what is that? I guess this is just what Microsoft are focusing on this generation, they brought out a clip of Spielberg for to talk about a TV show, in comparison Sony brought out Jonathan Blow on stage for 5 minutes to talk about an indie game, I think I know where their priority's lie now.
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