i eat llamas

16th June 2013

Post with 6 notes

I know it’s cool to hate on Microsoft right now, but here are my thoughts:

1) Used games - It’s kind of funny to me that publishers have been bitching about used game sales for years, and now they’re nowhere to be found. I can see a number of concerns with the lack of ability to freely purchase used games, but you could also compare this to Steam, which people have come to lovingly embrace. Steam shows that a model can exist where you can buy budget-friendly games while still allowing the publisher to get their portion of it. Digital distribution is a growing trend, and sooner or later everyone’s going to be catering to it. Even Nintendo has recently seen huge success with digital distribution (New Leaf’s digital release broke Nintendo’s eShop records: http://www.siliconera.com/2013/06/13/animal-crossing-new-leaf-sets-nintendo-eshop-sales-record-in-u-s/ ). Like it or not, publishers have every right to be upset with the current model. Big budget video games can cost tens of millions of dollars to create, and used game sales can seriously impact a company’s return on investment in a product. Keep in mind, however, that they’re not out to piss all off their customers off, and a happy medium can be found.

2) Internet connectivity required - 

I’m going to break this down into a number of complaints I’ve heard (and even experienced) on this subject.

a) What if I don’t have a readily-available high speed internet connection?  - Sorry to hear that. There are over 60 million people in the US subscribed to the top broadband providers in the country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_United_States), and while Adam Orth’s twitter outrage might have been over the top (and deservingly got him fired), he did have one thing right in my opinion: we live in an increasingly connected world. My concern with this isn’t the fact that Microsoft is demanding internet connectivity for their consoles; in fact, I’m fine with that. If constant connection benefits the consumer, instead of being just a DRM tool, then I think it’s perfectly justified. Some parts of this could be very consumer friendly (cloud computing, “family” xbox live accounts with games that can be accessed from multiple consoles in a home, etc) but a lot remains to be seen. Cloud computing could be a really, really cool innovation with enough time and work (if you don’t think that the concept behind Forza 5’s “driveatars” is pretty cool, then I don’t know what to tell you.)

b) What if Microsoft’s servers are down for more than 24 hours? - this is a perfectly reasonable concern, but one that seems pretty unlikely. I know most of us (including myself) have probably been burned on this one (I’m looking at you Diablo 3 and SimCity), but Xbox LIVE has historically been very stable, and even more so since they’ll be going from 15,000 servers today to 300,000 servers at the launch of Xbox One. Are problems possible? Sure. Are they likely? No. I, for one, spend a -lot- of time on my 360 and service problems seem to be rare at best.

c) If you’re banned from Xbox LIVE, then you lose access to every game that you’ve registered to your account - I’ve seen this post floating around Tumblr all day. Larry Hyrb, Director of Programming for Xbox, has denied this.(http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/16/banned-xbox-one-accounts-will-retain-access-to-purchased-games/ ) . That’s that.

3) The Kinect is required to use the console (insert corporate conspiracy theories here) - If a multi-billion dollar company wants to waste time and money watching me play video games in my underwear, good for them.

Seriously, though, I can understand concern for privacy. Kinect’s voice features actually look pretty awesome and user friendly. Twitch streaming and built-in Skype functionality are both awesome. We’ve already heard that you can turn voice features off, and if you’re really, truly concerned that someone’s going to be spying on you, then…I don’t know, turn the Kinect around?

I’m admittedly kind of a Microsoft fanboy, and I’ll be the first to admit that E3 was an absolute disaster. The biggest problem seems to be Microsoft’s executives saying all of the wrong things, and not playing up the consumer benefits of the features they’ve decided to implement.

That being said, I’ll probably own both consoles anyway (and hey, Nintendo, I already have my WiiU). I’d love to discuss this (calmly :P ) with anyone else who’s been following the industry closely for the last few months. Hit my ask box up.

Tagged: megamingmicrosoftxbox onesonynintendoe3