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.
