Perfect? No. The console has plenty of problems ahead of it, but I am of the opinion that they have more to do with original cause for protest regarding the first announcment and the focus on media with distinctive lack of games. Along with the high price point and required(?)/bundled Kinect, sure, I question the consoles appeal. The kinect wouldn't even be a problem (if not exactly a benefit for someone who doesn't desire it), but given the problem of price, it's inclusion is likely the cause.SpunkeyMonkey said:
So, no. Not perfect, but regarding the always online / DRM? I really don't see it as a real issue, especially considering that as far as I can tell 'always online' is really only a once a day check-in. While annoying in principle that is something I could manage even in my rural growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere days.
But as I was saying, while statistics put the population with poor/no internet suprisingly high, those people do not coorespond with Microsofts target market, which is the xbox live subscribing (46 million users as of April), online player that does have decent internet, and will more than likely never even notice these issues in practice.
The console may have plenty of issues ahead of it, but as far as this internet-requiring business goes, the biggest hurdle is bad press. All things considered, I think that once released, (barring any RROD level incidents) and out in the public for a while, these sorts of protests will die off faced with reality and the console will do just fine (or if it doesn't, price and lack of games will be the problem, little else).
Edit:
In addition, undecided about the used game thing. To begin, there's the likely point that simply selling the console does not make MS money, might even be at a loss. They rely on XBL, DLC, and game sales for profit.
So, on the face of the matter, losing the 'used game player' market makes no different to them. They wouldn't want to sell to those people anyways. And people who only buy new aren't going to be affected anyways.
Really then, the 'at risk' market is people who do buy new and used, and may be swayed away by the lack of the latter option, thus costing ms the portion of games they do buy new. Also, those who want to share games with friends.
Now, I have no idea what those numbers would be. I've bought both used and new games, but I'm not sure I could say that not having the option to get used would sway me from buying a console if it had titles I wanted to play. Overall, I'd expect that at most, it will be a deciding factor for people who are really on the fence between this and a PS4. So a point for Sony, sure, but likely not a critical blow for MS.
Most of the same logic applies to sharing games. But frankly, it's been a long time since I've bothered sharing console games with friends anyways. No idea how important that is to most people, but the people who will hate it the most are people who aren't buying the games anyways.
