Right. First up, if you missed the press release and want everything said in a nutshell, here’s the conference Bingo card that was played at home that reveals everything in a nutshell.
There are a lot of things about the Xbox One reveal that didn’t sit too well with people. The fact that it will not be backwards compatible. The fact that it seemed to focus more on social media additions instead of focusing on being a console. The fact that the controller looks terrible. The massive fact that voice control and motion controls are boring and overdone.
I am not even remotely bothered by the lack of any truly grabbing launch games for me, because hey, give it some time and something good will come out. Being able to switch between TV and Skype is cool, I guess, if you live in America AND have Xbox Live. (Actually, that really gets on my nerves, but it’s fine. The biggest feature of your console is only for people who live in your home country or pay money per month for a service a PC gives them for free can do. That’s cool. Carry on.)
You know what gets me? What I was not expecting to happen in a million years? Online DRM on a console.
So, get this. Apparently, since EA and Ubisoft’s run-in with gamer rage over how online DRM works had somehow not reached Microsoft, and they have added a ‘feature’ where a mandatory installation into your hard-drive will need to be synced with your online profile, meaning that to install your games–that you bought, with your money–from a store, you may have to get online to do it.
Why is this so bad? Because as anyone with an internet connection in their home can tell you, sometimes, you just cannot get one to bloody work. Technology has not reached the stage where everyone in the entire world can be online all the time, and when that becomes an incredible requirement to actually play your game, then you might as well just throw your console in the trash for how redundant it has become.
Of course that’s rage enough, but get this: want to buy a pre-owned game? You would have to get it uninstalled on the former owner’s hard drive, then installed on yours, FOR A FEE.
I’m sorry, what?
The real reason why this bothers me is that this is not just to fight piracy. Oh no, that would be simple. I could link a million articles written about how trying to stop the pirates is a waste of time. This is stopping people from reselling their product. They are pretty much saying ‘Are you a working class who can’t afford full price games? Then you do not deserve our console’.
Think back to your nostalgic games when you play it on a console. What was the first thing you wanted to do when you found a game that you considered incredible? You wanted to go over to your friends house and show them. Welp, too bad, son!
Now take a look at retail stores who will be stocking your product. Do you really believe that they would stock a system that stops them doing their tried and true method of reselling hand-ins? No. If this goes through, Xbox One owners are going to find it very, very, VERY hard to find their section in their stores.
Please. Microsoft, I am begging you. On my hands and knees. I don’t care about motion control. Or about your stocks failing. Or about how you had the crowd fake cheering for you to make it look good on live TV.
Just… just stop this. Please.
