PixlBit

yeah I'm still getting a Ps4 first. 

Totally,Vic. Microsoft was pretty much a metaphorical bully strong-armed into behaving itself. (By us) That doesn't suddenly make them "the good guys".

However, it's nice. I'm still getting a pS4 first but now down the road I may get an X box 1 as well.

Do you honestly trust this company now? If the console is hardwired to lock in games, who's to say they won't do it later down the line? I would practice caution. You all are in an abusive relationship and need to wake up and get out of it. 

I'm still not going to get one right away, not until there are enough good games I want to play on it to warrant a purchase.  That's the deciding factor on when I buy a new console.

Let's not forget what Sony did to consumers with the PS3 at launch. They literally said in their press conference that you should go get two jobs to get this console. I bet you forgave them for that insulting anti-consumer statement right? This seems a little Sony biased and spiteful but altogether your thoughts aren't irrelevant obviously, we need to keep in mind what these companies do.

You're giving Sony more credit than they're worth too. It's likely the only reason they went against Microsoft's stances was because they saw the backlash they were getting. If Xbox One's policies went over smoothely you can bet thay Sony would've ponied up right along side them so they could make as much money as possible by cutting out used games and physical media. These companies WANT physical media to become the secondary method of consumption and over time it'll likely end up that way regardless. Another reason you shouldn't get ahead of yourself is because I think the reason Microsoft changed their policies is simply because Sony forced their hand, not consumer outcrying unfortunately. Sony's policies and price likely weren't solid until right after the Microsoft press conference. They were keeping their cards hidden and waiting to see what they could capitialize on the most. MS was pretty cowardly and didn't mention the unpopular policies so Sony went ahead and put them right up in the forefront of the conference. MS announced a $500 price, so Sony went with the $400 one to capitalize and it worked out beautifully. At the end of the day both of these companies have boned consumers before and developers as well.

I'm happy both companies are on the same page now at least, it makes for a better console war and better competition I'd think. I'm leaning towards the PS4 still but now that the Xbox One doesn't require always-online I think that it's a much more appealing product than it used to be.

I'm not arguing Sony is "saintly",Michael. I realize they want profits just like microsoft. However, I'm judging them by their actions in the present.

Think about it like this. Let me break it down.

How Sony screwed up last generation

PS3 was too damned expensive. They tried charging $600.00 dollars just because the PS3 had a bluray player. Wtf,sony?! I can't afford your shit!

How sony screwed up this generation

So, I have to subscribe to playstation plus to play online multi-player? (sighs) Okay,I guess!

How MS screwed up by comparison this gen

-Unfriendly to indie game makers

-24 hour check ins

-Kinect possibly linked to PRISM and NSA.

-Can only share game with 1 friend then it's stuck to his or her profile.

-Can only buy used games from retailers MS approves of. Fuck rentals and fuck Mom & Pop stores!

-When bringing game to friends house there's a check every 1 hour

-More expensive than a PS4

-When no longer supported online console will become a plastic paperweight

-Consumer doesn't really own their games

-Cds are glorified install discs

-Solution for people with poor internet? Get a 360!

Uh, yeah. Who screwed up more? And yes,I realize MS has gone back on most of these policies. However, they had to be strong-armed into doing the right thing whereas Sony did not.

At its' most expensive the PS3 still wasn't as abrasive to its' consumers. Nor was the 360.

You kinda proved all my points. People have been boned by both these companies. Just because of their performance and rhetoric at E3 people are seeming to forget all that and forgive all of it just because Sony could talk the talk. Sony might've done all the same crap MS did if it went over more smoothely, we will never know now thankfully. People are free to love Sony and pre-order PS4s all they want but I'm not going to let anybody try to play to "Sony is our knight in blue armor fighting for the gamer! Sony is the one true path granted by the gaming God!" nonsense without me giving them some perspective and bringing people back to reality.

The landscape of the console war is changing for the better I think but people seem very unwilling to let go of that story that Sony is the savior and MS are still the greedy illuminati lizard men. Sony no longer has that leverage and can't advertise as "the one that doesn't need internet every 24hrs and supports used games" Now both consoles do all the same stuff and the only difference left between them is $100 which could very well change, we will have to see what their plans are I guess. I'm just pissed off because people are trying to act like they don't want to let go of the MS hate and they want to keep the post-E3 story going even though it's changing in front of their eyes. We should be happy, not spiteful. Both these companies have boned everybody before, consumer and developer, neither gets to wave the flag of justice. This is like the fucking presidential election all over again except in the gaming variety. If people want to say "Let's not forget what MS said originally guyzz!!" We can play that game for Sony on many different fronts too. People are forgetting to see anything in context and with level heads. It's typical console war stuff and this community nor any community is immune to it obviously.

If you go by "Game Of Thrones logic" no knight is 100% shiny & chivalrous. lol. I'm well aware of this, Michael. But you gotta admit, microsoft tried to pull ALOT MORE SHIT this generation than sony did.

I'm not siding with the lord who is a perfect angelic gift from the heavens. But I am siding with the lord who supported me out of the gate. If said lord (Sony) acts like a total dick-wad later then I will not stand for his bullshit either. But for now he's acting reasonably so I raise my goblet to him.

Having stated the above, I'm glad the X box 1 has a chance in the console wars again. Competition is good and without Microsoft nipping at his heels, Sony would grow lazy,gluttonous,and uncreative.

Furthermore I will not be angry at any friend who chooses to purchase an X box 1 simply because microsoft's more consumer friendly policies are ones I can approve of. (Now that they have signed the peace treaty)

Still, that doesn't change the fact they extended the olive branch only because we put the squeeze on them. If we had not they would still be burning our barns, stealing our sheep, and raping our women. (Metaphorically of course. By the way, I'm sorry I'm going on a George R R Martin kick but my Batman/Joker analogies were getting old,bro! )

I don't agree with your statement that MS committed A LOT more bullshizz than Sony this generation, remember neither of us played on PS3s so we don't have proper context. PS3 users got boned too, hardware failures (most PS3 users I know are on their 2nd or 3rd PS3 now), PSN outages and hacks, even this week people are getting shit on by that firmware update that bricked quite a number of consoles already. There were a lot of problems this gen with MS and Sony's hardware but both companies have done pretty great jobs of making up for it during THIS gen. MS handled the RRoD really well by extending warranties, repairing them for free, and giving people free LIVE Gold among other things. Sony did a great job after the PSN outage by giving people some free PS+ and games, and PS is actually a superior service to LIVE so I think PS3 users ended up able to forgive Sony before long. Sony treated us like idiots at the launch of PS3 and insulted us as consumers and gamers by focusing a bunch on multimedia (people forget Sony is a giant movie and music corporation) and telling us to get a second job, so it's more than welcome to see them change the script this time and come to their senses. Meanwhile MS had a gigantic failure of policy and of the PR. The E3 interviews I watched of execs trying to explain the One and its policies made me cringe. Horrible business, total misjudging of their audience, and terribly naive.

I haven't been apologizing for MS or trying to get people to buy one, I'm just trying to vent some frustrations about the context people are putting this in. It's the subtle Sony fanboy undertones way of looking at things, that's what I gathered from some parts of Mr. Roman's blog here. Vic's not a fanboy, I've seen him on this site plenty, he actually designed the look of the site for anybody who doesn't know! I know Vic isn't a fanboy, he's a super nice guy, but he does enjoy the PS products which isn't a crime obviously. I absorbed undertones in the blog that set me off. People act like they knew what Sony was up to all along, they were always your buddy, doing the policies you love and making you feel comfortable.

Before E3 how much did anybody actually know about the PS4? Sony didn't talk about any of these controversial issues until the very last minute. Literally the last 5 minutes of their E3 presser, which leads you to believe (unless you see things from the fanboy goggles) that Sony's policies (as well as price) were likely in flux all the way till the last moment. They had plan A, plan B, and so forth and they finally decided which to go with once Microsoft had finished its press conference at E3. MS didn't touch the issues that it plagued itself with, people were still pissed off, and so Sony probably made the decision to avoid whatever policies MS was getting all the heat for. It's a very smart and sound business decision and strategy, but it doesn't mean Sony is anybodies buddy or gaming god and it doesn't mean Sony boned people "less". MS got muscled into changing its policies but it stands to reason that Sony likewise got indirectly muscled into their policies by watching MS take all the heat and acting accordingly.

On a side note I totally love you bringing up George RR Martin. I JUST bought the box set of the first four books of A Sony of Ice and Fire dude! I'm going to blog about it soon but you get the inside scoop I guess lol. I'm currently reading through Larry Niven's Ringworld but once I'm done I'll start reading the first book, A Game of Thrones. Way to be topical Ben, how did you know?

Sony is "Little Finger", aye? It's possible. However,even though Sony was "tight lipped" they pretty much told us not to worry about used games and online only functionality in earlier interviews. That said "Telling us not to worry about it" is vague in itself. It sounds nice but it doesn't clear up anything.

 We live in scary times,Michael & Casey. That's the only thing I can confirm for certain. lol.

No worries, I'm not offended, nor are you wrong that there are Sony favoritism undertones in my article. You'll notice that I have a PSN tag, Wii U tag, 3DS tag, but no Xbox tag. I've never owned a Microsoft console and only experienced them with friends at friends places.

With that said, I do like Xbox. It sucked to not be able to play Halo 3, Gears of War, Mass Effect (I'm finally playing Mass Effect 1 through 3 now on PS3), in those early days. It sucked having terrible ports games on PS3 instead of Xbox 360 due to Sony's developer-hell "Cell" processor. I hated Sony's ridiculously high PS3 pricing, and waited until the $399 mark, and for Metal Gear Solid 4, to purchase one. Though I didn't like Xbox 360's controller bumpers or dpad, I think the ergonomics, joysticks, and triggers are much better than PS3's. PS3's original six axis w/o dual shock was a terrible controller as well. But obviously there's something I prefer with the playstation brand so far, as I've been an owner since the PS1 days.

However, what I'm referring to in the article goes beyond PS4 and Xbox One, it goes into Microsoft's mentality. The PS3 had a TON of mistakes to make up for, a ridiculously high price point based on too expensive parts under the hood, Riiiiidge Racer!!!, historical giant crab fights. How about PSN comprimising all of their users personal information (something that is a risk with all online systems, unfortunately), not having any online for a month, sneaking in online passes on games where you didn't realize it until after you buy a used copy.

There's a LOT of crap on both companies. but what Microsoft was recently trying to do with the always online, or at least what their lackluster PR made them seem like they were trying to do, was limit our freedom of physical items, treating an item you bought and can hold in our hand, as a license that they ultimately can take away from you at any moment. It was a strategy that seemed to have the purpose of "let's limit the players, but disguise it as shiny new features rather than restrictions". Only most people saw the underlying problems with always online.

There's no problem with some things needing always online, and there are some features that, in a digital atmosphere, seem very cool. For example, buying a digital copy of a game and sharing it with 10 "family" members is a really cool feature, but when you buy a disc, then that disc only works as a license, and the disc is essentially worthless, then why even have a disc drive and sell discs at all?

I don't have a problem with an all digital system, Steam is an amazing example of how good a digital front can be. The problem I have is that Microsoft wanted to treat physical items with the same restrictions as a digital item. And furthermore, they wanted you to have to be "always online" to attempt to monitor piracy for everyone, even though I can tell you I have never pirated a game on a console, it had the guilty before proven innocent logic.

What really makes the whole always online, region lock, and physical disc restrictions fishy is that there is absolutely no reason why the Xbox one can't treat physical discs the way that current-gen systems do, but have all of these upgraded features of sharing games with friends, gifting games to friends, selling a digital license to another person once, (except for installing and not needing to use the disc, for obvious easy piracy issues) these all can still exists side by side on the same console. I don't understand why Microsoft is pulling the plug completely on their digital features. I also don't think those digital features should require you to be always online.

I see what Microsoft is doing to move into the future, but much like Windows 8 (that's an entire other story), I think they were ALMOST there, but the mistakes they made were gigantic. In this case, the mistake of restricting your ownership of a physical item is restricting your freedoms of a citizen of any country. It's the principal of what it meant for consumerism as a whole that makes me see this as one of the biggest controversies in gaming. To go extreme, could you imagine selling a barbecue but not having it work because the license code only worked for the original owner? I doubt it'd ever get that extreme, but that's the type of message Microsoft was sending.

Also, to be honest I don't think Sony was ever planning to do the used game restrictions. I'm positive, much like Microsoft, that they questioned developers, had focus groups, etc. to see what would work. I think Microsoft has more interest in the digital sales area since they are a software company. These types of Policies are things they could have tried to implement into their Microsoft Office suite, for example. That's just me guessing, but if I was a software company, I'd have an interest in trying to normalize these types of policies. Sony's bane is that they sell hardware, so they tried to push 3D when implementing 3D TVs, they forced Blu Ray's to beat out HD DVDs by implementing it into every PS3, etc. Also annoying, but not freedom restricting.

Microsoft's "future" had some good ideas, but some scary legal policies. The always online will never really make sense either, as there's no reason why you can't have a digital market place, fully online, to buy, trade, sell, share games, but then have an interface, allowed to be offline, where you can play those said games.

The "future" they were looking at is a very limited, egocentric view of a world where everyone has full access to the internet. My cousins in Chile would never be able to play it as many people there can't afford, nor have access to internet, other than at an internet cafe. Or if you live in a rural area (which a lot of people do), the system is useless. While internet may be the future, it's a very limited future. When someone makes a single player experience, there's no reason why you can't play that experience offline.

If microsoft were looking to please the consumer, they'd have integrated these features completely within a console capable of online and offline. More options under the same hood. That's just my rant anyways.

And just so everyone isn't confused, the PS4 and Xbox One both don't interest me a whole lot. My biggest fear with gaming is that the focus on blockbuster hits (Call of Duty Clones, Gears of War Clones) has really taken over creativity and group activity. That's where, even though Nintendo is terrible at communicating, I love their first party Wii U stuff. That's actually what I'm most excited about, sitting at my house with a group of friends playing Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Game & Wario. Nintendo is where my true loyalty lies, as they've always put the fun before the graphics. They're niche now for sure, but I'm glad that their games are just simply that, games.

Even on current gen systems, my favorite games are the small creative ones - Braid, Bastion, Journey, Flower, The Unfinished Swan, just to name a few.

See you're still the nicest guy in the world Vic lol, I really appreciate you taking my complaints and points so well and being able to make sense of the walls of text and banter between Ben and myself.

A week or so ago when Jesse here at the site posted his Rage Quit blog about the Xbox One I actually touched on a lot of the points you mentioned here and let him know why I was upset with the Xbox One. I loved the games MS showed at E3, and I'm a huge Halo campaign and expanded universe fan since the beginning, but MS's policies killed the entire system for me at the time. Namely the internet requirement, and their apparent lacking (not absence of, but severe lacking) of inclusiveness and support for indie games. I'm similar to you in that I don't have much of a problem with digital downloads as long as they're done well and physical media is still an option for those consumers that prefer it and want to pay a little extra. On a side note I believe that over the course of this generation digital will become more and more popular to the point where it will be the primary method of consumption for many people and hopefully these companies will learn from Steam and keep the prices of digital lower and also offer big sales to entice people, but physical will always be a part of the consumer's options if they're willing to pay the premium for them like we do nowadays already. It's a fact that physical is still popular despite the growing popularity of digital, and seeing as these companies like to make money it would be a good business practice to always give those physical consumers options they prefer and continue to make some money off it.

Back to the Xbox One, the internet requirement made me angry because designing a console around the assumption that everybody is connected to not only high quality internet but reliable internet all day everyday is silly. It bones tons of people not just in America but especially worldwide like you mentioned your cousins in Chile, not to mention alienating most of the military personnel that play games offline and appreciate games as an escape from their everyday stresses. I personally prefer an offline console because I believe that consoles and PCs should remain different in at least that aspect. The infrastructure of consoles are totally representative of a PC now, but I want to still be able to play offline games, offline. Consoles are suppose to be simpler and faster than PC gaming, you should only need a system, a TV, AV/HDMI cables, and a power outlet. Adding internet to that requirement throws a wrench into the whole system that makes console gaming appealing in the first place. It's suppose to be simple and fast and I believe internet requirements hurt that appeal and would've kept the console out of the hands of quite a few people.

The sluggish and minimal support they showed for indie developers at E3 really put me off because inclusiveness is one of the biggest things I want to see expand in this coming generation. I want the industry to be more inclusive, I want tech to be shared even more, I want to keep getting high quality development tools and design education into the hands of as many people as possible so that we can build an increasing environment of community creativity, inspiration, challenge, and artistic freedom. I'm a budding designer and I'm not only interested in game building but also in education. I can tell that there's no shortage of creativity and ideas in the gaming industry. One of the big secrets of this craft of game design is that there's in fact too many ideas, the problem is there's not enough people who are technically qualified to implement them and create the games they want to see. The more educated designers we have out in the market with high quality development tools, the better chance we have to increase the diversity and quality of gaming content. Sony is definitely courting indie developers, but MS's minimal support of it has frustrated me a great deal.

MS showed a lot of great games I'd like to play but they killed it with those policies, meanwhile Sony won me over on every level. Now that the conversation has changed and the majority of the things I disliked about the Xbox One have changed, MS's product is far more appealing to me. Sony still has an edge for me because The Witness is coming out first for PS4, and Sony is also doing a much better job of courting indie developers. And I can't forget the $100 price difference, the PS4 is extremely appealing and I'm going to want one, but now finally the Xbox One appeals to me much more than it originally did. Maybe someday I can have an XBO as well and I don't have to miss out on the Halo games I love. If in fact I buy a PS4 first as I plan to, at least I'll have Bungie's Destiny to play and that will certainly scratch my sci-fi shooter itch really well.

I'm quite attracted to both consoles, I just want to see the Pixlbit community show some more positivity about the console war and not turn into a haven for any fanboys from any side. We had legitimate complaints about the Xbox One (some of us still do), but in no time at all those legitimate complaints got drowned out by hyperbole, "Lol's", sensationalism, and way more negativity than the situation probably called for. One of the things I've loved about this place and one of the reasons why I've championed Pixlbit for so long is the fact that when you look around the community users and staff they all have incredibly varied tastes in gaming. People play on all different consoles, have all different types of childhood nostalgia for the varieties of historical gaming companies, and have loves of very different genres. But throughout all the time I've been here we have all been able to have debates and discussions with a lot of positivity and inclusiveness. I was afraid that all of that was starting to change during this console war, people were being so negative and one-sided without stepping back to take a breath. Console wars are naturally pretty messy, but I don't want to see the positivity, inclusiveness, and constructive debates this site has always had be spoiled by it.

Gotta agree with this. I was actually a pretty big Sony hater last gen because of all the bullshit they were pulling with the PS3. Now it's my favorite console and that old stuff before doesn't bother me because they fixed my problems. We got the best case scenario out of this, but I'll never trust either of these guys even without that bullshit. They just need to supply hardware and software that appeals to me and I'm good.