You walk into a Post Office, the AA, Burger King or any other situation where you are forced to deal with someone. You make your request, be it for a whopper with fries, renewing your driving license or even to post a simple letter. You can tell the person behind the counter isn’t really listening you, and lo and behold, your order come out wrong, your letter not delivered. All because someone wasn’t listening… How frustrating is that?
Now imagine Microsoft’s frustration as the revealed their next big project – the Xbox One – to the world and it was met with a whole lot of outcries about not being gaming focused. For at least a month prior, the official line for the Xbox reveal was that it was focused on hardware. The gaming will come later at the giant gaming convention: E3. The simple fact is that the vocal minority didn’t listen to them – doing the exact same thing that frustrates them in day to day life when people don’t listen to them. Its really not that hard.
Other “cons” to the Xbox One have been the no backwards compatibility and always online. Apparently Sony’s answer to this out cry is to let gamers stream PS3 games from the PlayStation Network. So you need to have an always online console to get backwards compatibility – and this is an accepted solution? I am not planning to get rid of my Xbox 360, so I don’t see the issue – along with ever other Xbox fan I have spoken to. As for the always online – well its more like it has to “phone home” once a day. Now here in the first world, I haven’t met anyone without Internet. I also know a lot of gamers making the biggest noise about this are the ones with the top tier internet plans.
And for the whole “used games” market – the recent leaks from Sony have shown that the PS4 is going down the exact same route as Microsoft with a fee for borrowed / resold games. The always listening. This is another funny one because the only complainers are those using Android and Google Now. You know, that helpful assistant which tells you when to leave home to be at work on time. Its pretty much the same thing. Google has your personal information, and that’s OK… The Xbox is only listening for the phrase “Xbox On”. And Google Glass is waiting to hear “Ok, Glass”.
At the end of the day, the hardware is similar – only the sign on the box and the services it brings will be different. Why am I not getting a PS4 then? Well, because I like what Microsoft is doing. I like where they are going. And it fits into my ecosystem at home.
What’s the point to this? The point is that people can’t focus on a product from one company and call it bad while being totally OK with another company doing the same thing. That, and I am over supposed “people in the know” spreading false information.
