PixlBit

LOL.  That's messed up.  

No kidding. :p

yeah that's ugly.  gaming isn't what it used to be.  :(

If people had told me that THIS was the stuff we'd be talking about for next gen consoles back in '05/'06, I would've laughed. It's amazing that we got THIS close to MS's initial vision becoming a reality.

now I am pissed.  I hate Microsoft at this point, even more than I did when they did the 180.  The have been so vague on every detail possible.  I am sorry, but I think that anybody getting the xbone day one is an idiot.  Microsoft has lost all of my trust...  Maybe that is why I have not touched my 360 in weeks.   

This entire reveal has been a complete, utter fiasco almost from go. I can't think of much that Microsoft managed to do right, and it only took massive levels of anger and bad press to force them to change course. Given all that, I can't really blame you.

I still think that they made a mistake by doing a 180.  I think that they should have still tried to differentiate themselves from Sony.  

The sad part is they will try again but this time with more careful thaought and no i dont feel sorry for this employee his vision failed cause no matter what he had in mind for the gamer the fact is you would be renting a system and the games for it and thats exactly what you would be doing if Microsoft would have had there way.

Oh, I'm sure both Sony and MS will go much further than this next gen. I'll be surprised if they even allow physical disks at all, frankly.

My case manager is a total dude-bro that ordered a X1 the first chance he could. He kept on defending it no matter what I said, or what Microsoft did. This was one of the things that he kept on mentioning as some great feature. What a joke lol.

Wow, he's a real trooper. I'm sure MS would've been happy to hear it. :p

man i argued over systems with a couple of Xbone fanboys till i was blue in the face and they still went a preordered a stupid Xbone some people just cant get it.

So it was a demo sharing system? Eh.

Yeah, pretty much. -_-

I suppose that I'm lucky to be the only gamer in our house! Sales and pre-order speak volumes so at least Microsoft have been forced to listen this time around. Unfortunately it's only added confusion to the whole situation for Microsoft and whilst I'm sure they will find their feet the stumble at the starting block will be problematic for them.

I would consider it more of a full-on faceplant than just a stumble at this point. :p

Here's the real problem--gaming as a business has to be safe nowadays. We've made it that way.

I've worked in development, and now I work in press--developers are the most put-upon, totally-shafted people in the industry, because you can bust your ass and come out with something completely new and innovative, but if it's the slightest bit imperfect, it gets slammed.

Just look at Remember Me! Great ideas, great world, a strong female lead, some really solid implementation, but it's not a 10/10 AAA Game of the Year Experience. Less people are willing to buy it at $60, and the overwhelming majority of people say they'll buy it used.

So what does this mean? It means that none of the money goes back to Dontnod, the developers of the game who actually came up with the idea and put in the work, and all of the money instead goes to Gamestop. Now, when Capcom goes looking for what new title to put money, it's not going to go for what's new, what's different, what takes getting used to.

They're going to put money into another Resident Evil sequel that's even more safe than previous titles. They're going to put money into a Dead Rising game that lacks the charm and goofiness of previous installments, and instead is grittier, harder, ironically safer.

The same thing goes for game consoles, and why I was at least partially supportive of what Xbox One was trying to do. I remember when people balked at the idea of using a d-pad instead of a joystick! I remember when people then balked at the idea of analog sticks taking precedence over d-pads, and then, do any of you remember how many people flipped their shit at having to use dual-analog controls in the early 2000s? NOW THAT SHIT IS STANDARD.

So yeah, I was okay with having mandatory Kinect functionality. It would've been something new to learn, something fresh. It may have hit some bumps along the way, but that's where innovation comes from.

Does anybody remember Net Yaroze on the PS1? Maybe SegaNet, which we all had to pay for? Does anybody remember how strange the idea of Xbox Live was at first, and downloadable content like Halo 2's Multiplayer Map Pack or Ninja Gaiden's Hurricane Pack? Drop a couple bucks on some extra content? NOW THAT SHIT IS STANDARD.

Maybe Microsoft didn't market the ideas for their new console well enough. And yeah, it would have severely alienated people in the military, who flocked to the 360 because of its lower price point and emphasis on multiplayer games. But y'know what? All the people who spend shit-tons of money on video games actually tend to live in places with good internet. I have fucking great internet, as does just about everybody I know, but I will say that the "always-online" should not require a 24-hour check. Connect once like they're doing now, prove that it's a legit system and a legit user, and then never need it again. I'm a little sad that it can't just work right out the box, but if our phones require internet connections, if our handhelds require internet connections, then it only makes sense for consoles to make that leap too. But for those of us who are serious about this hobby, and put the money down for it, well... we shouldn't have to suffer because of people who want to keep things the way they are.

Remember how people were confused about the Dreamcast's Windows functionality? Nobody uses a console to browse the internet, that's absurd! Remember how strange it was that 360 and PS3 started supporting apps like Netflix and Hulu, and then branching out and getting music-specific apps and sports-specific apps? They're gaming systems, the focus should be on the games, right? But NOW THAT SHIT IS STANDARD.

This is an evolving industry, a fluid environment where anything can happen. Think, now--with your busy schedules involving work, or school, or your families, how many of you have had eight straight hours to play a single-player video game? Probably not many of you. With your busy schedules involving work and school and all that, aren't you pumping money into your internet service provider to make sure your internet stays on? Because it kinda sucks to not have online, doesn't it? So if I were to say "HEY DUDE, TRY THIS GAME," you're probably not going to play the full game. You're going to play some of it, and decide whether you want it or not--just like if I handed you the disc. That's kinda how it works in my group of friends.

Console games are going online. They're going the way of PC gaming. It is the future. It's going to happen eventually. It's fine if you step out, too, it's just a hobby. But I am getting fucking sick of people talking about change and evolution like it's a bad thing. I'm getting even sicker of The Internet Mob immediately jumping on something they all deem bad without having tried or experienced it.

I mean, no offense, gigantor, but all your console online was on PSN. That's like rating the quality of all hamburgers by going to McDonalds. I mean, if you had good connectivity on PSN, I cannot see how you'd be so down on this, because the internet in New York must be amazing.

I do remember what it was like playing PS1 games before the Dualshock came out. Those dual analog sticks were a godsend for 3D platformers and shooters (although a mouse and keyboard is still the best for the latter). It was something that, once I tried it, made me wonder why they didn't think of it to begin with. I was in elementary school when the first DualShock came out, so I wasn't really following gaming news online the way I do now. I've never heard about it being a problem before. :p

At my school, stuff like Quake, Tribes and Starcraft were pretty big back in the 90's/early 2000's. So I was happy to get online functionality on consoles. If we're talking about SegaNet, I begged my parents to put up money for me to connect after being able to borrow a friend's Dreamcast for a while. I was excited at the prospect of playing online on consoles years before the current gen started.

In those cases, those innovations served to enhance the experience ways that (for me anyway) were unambiguous. They either solved legitimate problems, or enhanced the experience in a way the old models couldn't. Kinect and the Wii have been around for a while, but neither has convinced me that motion controls are "the way of the future". I can't justify paying an extra $100 on a console for it.

There are plenty of things that the industry has pushed--full motion video, 3D screens, the PS Move, CD add-ons, weird ass peripherals like the Power Glove, and more--that simply never caught on, only become niche, or are just the backwash from fads. It's up to MS to prove that the Kinect doesn't fit into those categories, as they won't have the "separate add-on" excuse to deflect any questions or criticism. Not that it's a valid excuse when they've been pushing it so hard, but whatever.

The Xone's approach to handling games distribution, however, isn't some bold new innovation meant to enhance gaming. I only see a means a means of forcibly limiting people's options with physical copy to insulating the industry from market pressures, because MS was too pussy to either leave well enough alone or go all digital.

If MS and publsihers really want people to go digital, they can people to go that route on their own. They could implement the group sharing plan on digital copies only. They could lower prices on the digital copies, rather than charging full retail price and pocketing the difference--something that's pissed me off for years this gen. Instead of dumping all these restrictions on people's heads and telling them to suck it up or buy a 360, they could gradually pull people into going digital while still allowing the same options we have now on physical games. 

You really think limiting those options will HELP a game like Remember Me sell at $60? Because I can only see people becoming more gunshy about games they're iffy about without them. Without the added value those options bring to their purchases, more people will wait until the game is dirt cheap or simply not buy it at all. I don't see it being the boon you or other industry people make it out to be.

And there are whole genres that have a very justifiable reason to be online all the time. WoW and Final Fantasy Xi have been around for almost a decade. If it makes sense from gameplay standpoint, then people won't assume you're just pretending it's not DRM (i.e. SimCity). And there are still plenty of places around the world, including here in the States, where networks aren't fast or reliable enough to make constant connections justifiable.

But I do agree with you that digital is inevitable. I fully expect consoles to be digital-only devices in the gen after next. But we won't be ready for that for several years, and the way online services and digital content have worked this gen don't convince me the industry is ready yet either. Which made MS's "my way or the highway" push so ridiculous.

Kinect is actually better proving its worth through medical technologies:

http://www.1up.com/news/kinect-mods-help-surgeons-blind

but yeah, I do agree with you that it still has a ways to go before actually proving itself a viable concept in gaming. I was hoping with this generation that we would start the long march away from the controller, really trying to push new ways of experiencing games. The Wii was an interesting, if faltered step in that direction with its gestural controls--1:1 motion controls are too finicky, and I notice that a lot of people don't always have the finesse that video game combat requires.

You've heard me say this on DG and Facebook, but I think games should be cheaper. Or at least, games should have a bigger variety of price points--something like Remember Me would sell better at $40 or $35, like High Moon's new Deadpool game. It paints an accurate picture of what you're getting, and you're more likely to drop $40 on a new game that you know isn't perfect, but has some redeeming values. Save the $60 price point for the huge games, the ones like Skyrim or a new first-party Nintendo title.

And the thing is, PC games have held the same price for years for physical copies--$50--and then along comes Steam and everything is dirt-cheap. Digital sales are fucking awesome and a great way to expand your collections, but nobody complains about not being able to share these games with friends because of the lack of a physical copy (at least, until Steam allows game sharing). We're still at a point where all of this is being worked out. We know where we want things to go, but we still have no idea how to feasibly make it all work the way we want.

Steam is the main reason I don't have a big problem with digital distribution on principle. I don't mind not having physical copy at the right price on PC, where it's always been more restrictive anyway. I doubt I'm even old enough to remember when there was a used PC game market. 

And even in that context, you still see stuff at full price for a while outside of sales. Black Ops II is still $60; Fable III is still $50 despite coming out two years ago. Deadpool literally came out on Steam TODAY and it's still cheaper; you can get the 360 version of Fable III for $6 at Gamestop.

Publishers really need to take the same pricing route that we see with Deadpool and Anarchy Reigns. People aren't going to be more willing to put up $60 a game once we go all digital. I know I would've bought a lot more games new--hell, in general--if more games started at $40 or something.

As for Kinect...we'll just have to see. Nintendo is emphasizing the WiiU's gamepad, and Sony's new Eye camera isn't a standard pack in, so MS has to carry the burden to prove it's worth before third-parties do more with it. What they can do, I have no idea.

Oh boo hoo...This guy at MS needs to suck it up and stop treating the gaming community as if we don't know what's good for us. I was laughing by the time I reached the end of his sob story. Their family shared plan was a joke.

So a glorified demo experience? Isn't that how Zune worked? You would lend friends song from your library but they had to buy it after a little sampling. LOLz Zune has reappeared.

Ouch, that really is messed up. How can that be considered sharing when it will limit you after so many times of playing. It almost sounds like that patent that Sony put in for making game demos harder and harder the longer you keep it/play it.

It will not be missed.