PixlBit

So, it's finally happened. The last of the next-gen consoles to be revealed, the Xbox One got it's official announcement this morning (or afternoon in New York anyway). A few things that popped out at me:

- The show should've been longer. We should've gotten more detailed info about the hardware specs; that little snippet it got was lacking, to say the least. Also, more games should've been shown, especially from Microsoft itself. They said they're making 15 new games that'll be out by this time next year, including 8 new IPs, but we only saw one of them. Why not add an extra half hour and showcase a few more of those?

- Kinect looks much improved, and the way it's used to navigate the new Dashboard looks really intuitive and easy to use. I also like the Snap functionality, which lets you pull up multiple apps at once just with voice commands. If it works as well as it did on the stage demo (always an open question), then it'll be fantastic.

- I have very little interest in the fantasy leauge stuff or the cable integration. At all. I don't follow sports much, and I play my games in my room so I have no cable service to route through it to begin with. I haven't played any video games on the big screen in our house in years. Nor do I have any interest in seeing stuff like a Halo TV show, whether Spielberg is involved or not.

- The few gameplay showcases we got either didn't look that much better than current gen stuff (Forza 5, COD:Ghosts) or looked like blatant pre-rendering (EA's Sports games). It's a far cry from the Sony showcase, where they had stuff that looked amazing and were bonafide real-time demos. Killzone, at that! XD

All in all, this wasn't anywhere near as good as the PS4 reveal. They didn't show enough games, the ones they did show didn't interest me that much, and there was too much emphasis on general entertainment. Beyond that, doubling down on an experience centered around cable-box content in this post-Netflix and Pirate Bay world doesn't seem like a wise long-term strategy. People are already drifting away from the content MS was so intent on showcasing integration with, and I only expect that trend to accelerate over time.

Then on top of being underwhelmed by the show, another piece of news really ground my gears.

So the good news is that the Xbox One won't require a constant online connection. Really glad we won't have to deal with that. The bad news is that it will charge a flat fee for use of any second hand games. Apparently, the games will only be used to install the content onto the harddrive, and any subsequent installations on different Live accounts will require a fee. So it's essentially an across-the-board online pass.

That's bad enough on it's own. But it makes me think back to how Shuuhei Yoshida talked about how the PS4 wouldn't block used games either. While he said they wouldn't block them as a matter of course, when pushed on it further he demurred, deferring to his PR handler rather than getting into specifics. So now I'm worried (again) that Sony may do something similar, as it still counts as them not blocking used games entirely. But then again, not implementing something like this would give them a big advantage with gamers--one console would charge for used games and the other wouldn't. Still...

But hey. At least we got to see the box this time, right?