I'm really disappointed with the reversal of opinion. What made the Xbone interesting to me - the always online connectivity, family sharing and mandatory Kinect - has been somewhat put down. I was looking forward to what exactly 'cloud computing' can do, I was interested in more games adopting systems like Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. You know, integrating the single and multiplayer experience? Game developers can no longer guarantee that every user has access to the internet, which could have been an interesting point to develop from. Now, well, we'll never know.
And that's what hurts about this. What the Xbone was doing was unprecedented. Don't get me wrong, I know that doesn't mean good, inherently. It's just, and bear with me here, nobody has to buy the Xbox One. The PS4 was always an option, and a cheaper one at that. If you don't have an internet connection, you have the option of - no, not the xbox 360 - the PS4. It's there. It's a choice. A safe choice. It's not changing anything. The Xbone? Previously we didn't know if it would be a safe choice. We didn't know if it was what we wanted. It certainly wasn't a rich dark roast. And that's what we want, isn't it? We all want a rich dark roast. We all sing together that we know what we want and what we want is a rich dark roast.
The Xbone could have been a game changer. Microsoft has decided now to go where the money is, abandon it's backbone and chase after every ounce of hype and every last dollar. And now we will never know, at least not for another 8 years, if the Xbone's original system is in fact a great one.
For posterity, I wholly support being able to just, you know, give people discs.
EDIT: I just thought I'd point out something that really irks me about this whole Xbone situation, as I feel it represents the gaming industry and culture as a whole.
People complain, day in and day out, about the lack of change in games. The repetition of the exact same systems and stories from past generations of game. And yet, when Microsoft tried something new with a console, everyone cried 'What's wrong with the way things are? Can't everything just be the same? Everything is fine here, we don't need change!'.
Food for thought.