Since the moment the Xbox One reveal was over – hell maybe even since they told you its name – the disappointment, anger, negativity, and digital frying has been plowing ahead full speed like a nuclear bomb carrying train without any breaks. Gamers, bloggers, writers, and even your neighbor’s best friend’s mom have all given in their vote on how bad this next gen console appears to be.
It’s easy to get lulled into this crowd; to get taken away in the emotion of the many voices who have cried “failure”. Even if you weren’t so upset initially sometimes all it takes is a few well spoken words drilled into your skull until all you hear when you hear Xbox One is “Xbox Bro” or negative thoughts like “always on”. They will convince you that Microsoft is the devil, trying to sell your soul for a few digital bits that aren’t worth the price you paid for them. And who’s to say if they’re wrong.
What about those few brave souls who dare to be defiant against this onslaught of negativity?
Are there even any who fit in these shoes? I took to some social media streets to find out. On Google+ I especially found some voices who had something new to say in response to what we have read again and again the past few days. Most of the comments below were taken from a discussion in the Xbox Community.
Brandon Clark, member of the Xbox Community said:
“Solid unveiling in my eyes. They came out and did what they were supposed to which was show what the system could do and the new features. Everyone is complaining because they didn’t show off any games but they didnt need to. Microsoft is known for having a great library of xbla games and indie games so why show off something that is expected. Sony had to show off games becuae Xbox has buried them in the console war in America. They had to do what they could to get people excited. Microsoft has a great rep when it comes to games so theres no need to be worried at all.”
Carlos Gutierrez noted that “people are loosing focus right now because they didn’t show many games but just wait till e3…”, which seemed to be a general sentiment among gamers in many communities. Gaming communities everywhere are counting down the days until June 11th when they can get more of a game glimpse than sports and CoD. Not that there isn’t anything wrong with those, but they aren’t exactly a wide range of games. If last year’s E3 has any insight into what we can expect, than maybe gamers should wait and see what might yet be revealed to them.
Patrick Bense was in particular a very passionate gamer about the reveal. Among his many points he said:
“I honestly don’t understand all the hate. I am not someone who follows these things religiously, but even I knew the event wasn’t going to feature games. Microsoft brought foward a product that will fundamentally change the way I view entertainment…”
He went a step above that by highlighting X1’s (and yes I have officially adopted it to be X1 as it’s the only cool sounding version out there) positive features he was looking forward to:
“1) I can watch TV and snap twitter to the side of the screen for updates during a hockey game from people I care about. Was this possible before? Probably, and I would do it using my phone too, but the snap with live TV is amazingly better.
2) I can be playing a game like NHL and watch live TV until the match is fully loaded, my friends can either alert me or I can get some sort of alert from the game. The best part is that I can instantly switch back to the game. Are you kidding me? I know it doesn’t sound like such a great new enhancement, but input switching is annoyingly slow.
3) I can turn off the system in the middle of a game and come back to resume whenever… this wasn’t confirmed, but they hinted at it (I know PS4 has this)”
All this sums up a lot of the very things people were complaining about – entertainment and tv – but in the end are these things necessarily bad things in and of themselves? Not really. They are only bad if the system and games they are tied to cannot satisfy or meet gamer demands. In the end, if the games are fun to play, we will play them. And we’ll probably be tweeting about it, too. Even gamers are human, after all (well mostly). They just can’t resist the shiny sparkle of doing something in a more evolved way. We may not need to talk to our Xbox, but if the tech works well who wouldn’t want to?
Gamer Michael Springer enthuses:
“I am definitely going to get one. But yeah I would like that more information on the new Xbox 1. But I’ve played every game system out there including PC , the Wii and the PlayStation 3 and all original Xboxes. Microsoft has won me over hands down. I will definitely be glad when E3 hits so I can find out more spec.’s on the new system.”
Likewise Dave Chavez also shows optimism:
“What I’m really looking forward to is how far developers are going to push this new console to extremes in console gaming.”
So despite not knowing all X1’s dirty little secrets, there are still some hopeful fans out there who are willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. Others, such as Gutierrez, even liked the way the console looked. Moreover, when it came to the X1 not having backwards compatibility Bense simply declared it ridiculous to expect such a feature, and continued saying:
“Name all the systems that successfully had backwards compatibility…360 didn’t really have it… PS3 didn’t really have it… and every system before that didn’t have it. Changing a chipset on the new console (for the better might I add) would require developers to port their games again which costs money, which means they won’t be free.”
There was also a lot of hoopla about how the X1 would be watching every move you made, like some wacked out peeping next door neighbor. No one seemed to comment about this constant complaint with the next gen system, but I will take a stab at it. Making comments like this makes me think that people don’t have computers running in their houses which are also always online. Guess who could potentially have access to peeping into your PC panties, hmmm? Yea, your service provider, and the websites you go to. I mean, that’s the reason we all wanted to stop the CISPA bills from happening. Why we had an internet revolt blackout – so that companies wouldn’t be able to legally give the government any information about us they wanted with total immunity. Think about how much information is gathered about you from the websites you visit, and the social media sites you use everyday. Some to the point of ultimate creepy factor. So although I don’t relish the idea of yet one more form of this, as consumers we don’t really push very hard with the issue regarding anything else.
All in all I think it’s safe to say that the reveal itself was a disappointment to some fans, but that regardless there are still gamers out there who are excited about it as well. The best we can do is to save our final judgement for when we have a more hands on view of this Nintendo X1 and its games.
