*NOTE: This is purely hypothetical and was kinda written at 4:30am...^
I actually want to see what they would have done with it. At first I was like hell no when it was first announced but after reading interviews and stuff online I realized that microsoft just did a really...Really bad job at marketing it. That and sony wasn't exactly helping but hey, they're microsoft's direct competition so you can't exactly blame them I'd have done the exact same thing if I had been in charge. Anyway back to the DRM as thedoodseven said steam has a form of drm yet somehow that's ok and it works for them? Microsoft had good ideas, unfortunately they didn't have enough time to get someone who actually knew what they were talking about before everyone decided to have a hissy fit.
Let's start off with the digital only games (like steam) I dunno about you but have you downloaded a game on the xbone yet? I've got AC4, DR3, and BF4 downloaded and have Forza 5 on disk. Now have you ever been having a bad game on battlefield and decided to rage quit? I can tell you it's alot less stressfull to say "Xbox go to Dead Rising 3" and merc like 3,000 zombies then it is to angrily have to switch games and possibly break something (I'm over exaggerating of course but I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened to more then a few people) It's actually a step above a mouse as you're even more connected. Now I know what you're saying "I like having a physical object to hold" and as someone who just dropped a freakish amount of money on a gold edition Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in it's box...I know how you feel. However we must learn to move on with our technology. I mean you would still have a "shelf" of games, only they'd be in a folder and wouldn't be in backwards so you have to take them out just to see what the game is then realize it isn't what you're looking for. Isn't the purpose of next gen console to build upon it's predecessor and create a new "better" (I use that term loosely as mistakes have been made in the past and I will guarantee will be made in the future) As we stand now the xbone is just a more powerful 360 with a better kinect. Now I could talk about the kinect and the 50/50 attitude towards that but like I said above...it's 4:30. So ignoring the kinect (for now) you're dropping $500/£429 for literally a upgrade. This is the part where I ask why don't you just build a good gaming computer as it'll last longer and what not but then again Steam is the source (see what I did there
) for games and well you already know where this is going. (plus dem exclusives)
Comparing it to steam one more time however. How do you think that steam managed to get away with what it's at know? I can tell you that in the beginning it was rough. There was a time when you couldn't play your games offline and the only way you'd be able to is to actually go connect to your profile online and check the box everytime before you went offline. Then there's the whole actually downloading the steam client but we're gonna pretend that isn't a thing...Anyway Steam got the reputation it has because of it's sales and it's connection with third party devs. I mean EA has it's own client (origin) however they still know that they have to make games that are comparable for steam as they'd be losing tons of money if they didn't. However we don't care about that, we care about us. The Gamers. Now what won us over? Why the sales off course! The famous summer/winter sales that have bundles of big mainstream games for literally 10 bucks. We love it. So what if I can't trade games with my bro? it's only 4.99, hell usually you run into duplicates so you just gift them to friends anyway. Now back to microsoft. Having a purely digital market would allow for these sales. "But Micro$oft doesn't care about us and has never done anything like that before" Yes I know, but here in Canada we have a store called futureshop/best buy. Now whenever you go to trade in a game where's the first place you think of? I'd bet you money Gamestop was in the top 3 if not the first. So you know what Futureshop did? They did a deal right when the xbone was coming out where you can trade in any game, and I do mean ANY game from this generation (360, PS3, Wii U [dunno why Wii U was in there but whateves]) and you could get any any copy of AC4, CoD:Ghosts, or BF4 for any this gen console for free. Direct trade. They took a massive loss in this. However they gained alot of gamer's attention with it and their trade in's have sky rocketed after this deal. Who's to say that Microsoft wouldn't do something similar I mean you never know, they could have possibly added third party support for digital sales creating a weird form of competition with themselves where the gamer feels like we're getting deals and buy more games because of it.
So as for the whole "internet check up thing" the main argument against it are people that live in rural areas with little to no internet access. Well for starters it was just suppose to be a check, they never said you had to have a 20 ping. Only there had to be some sort of internet access. "What about those of us that don't have any internet access?" First, how are you asking me that on a forum? Second, people that live so far out usually live a different lifestyle then those of us in cities/towns. While I don't doubt that some of them don't play video games in their spare time I highly doubt they're running out to get the hottest new expensive gadget and think that microsoft has as much to worry about as sony does when it comes to that demographic.
I could go on about things like the "family share" feature and storing everything on the cloud and being able to access all your stuff on any xbone which ironically encourages physical social interaction through going to friends' houses instead of just giving them a disk but it is now 5:30 and I've gotta be up in 2 hours...so...ya I'll prob edit this tomorrow
