Zelgon said:
Well, looks like someone's been struck with Slowpoke Syndrome. Seriously, you're so late to picket the Xbone-hate train that it has done the circuit several hundred times over and the rail line has been retired.
But if you must necro this subject, I'll put my two cents on the points you're discussing.
Exclusives
Not a single game from either list that remotely piques my interest, so I guess it's tie. Go teams!
Firepower
Given how pointlessly expensive it's getting to make games slightly more graphically detailed/powerful so long as either console can run their games smoothly and efficiently I couldn't care less from then on in.
DRM
So Microsoft and friends are bringing out their defenses against piracy again, eh? When will they learn that no amount of DRM is going to prevent someone from cracking and pirating the games. DRM is largely a static defense, and static defenses don't work against adaptive opposing forces. It's getting to be that every time someone wheels out some new DRM I get the mental image of some civilian contractors building a wall, then daring a bunch of military demolitions experts to blow it up. It's rather pathetic, because all that the DRM does is punish and annoy the people who do buy their products legally, because it's certainly not stopping the ones who don't. Bonus it that all the features that the new and innovative things that online "offers" can be done better by things you can find in any remotely techie household or by older and consoles.
Family Sharing
A few guys have already pointed this out, but I want to reinforce the point here. The family sharing was confirmed to be a glorified demo system that let other members of your family/"family"friends play the game for one hour before it prompted them to buy it. Usually a proper demo starts the player off in a gameplay heavy section to give them a feel for the game, but with family sharing it's starts right from the beginning, so starting cut scenes and basic setup already cut into that very short window of play. Heck imagine if the game in question is like MGS4, where there's 22 minutes of cutscenes to slog through before you even get to see any gameplay. That is horrendous.
But even if Family Sharing worked like Microsoft was initially implying (ie being able to play the full game for free), its benefits are situational at best. First off, you'd need to have multiple Xbones in the same house, but because most families aren't rich enough to be able to afford multiples of the same gaming platforms (and those that could wouldn't likely care about paying an extra 60 bucks to get everyone their own game) having to do the authentication rigmarole between accounts is a lot more complicated and lengthy than just keeping the game disc in and logging onto different accounts. Second is that those multiple XB1 users must all have a lot of game preferences in common, which with the possible exception of family-oriented games (4eg the Lego series), can be a rather hit and miss affair, so YMMV. Finally comes internet connection. Now I do have friends who I share some of my tastes in gaming with, but more than just a few of them have spotty internet at best in their areas, and it'd be faster from me to drive/bus it to their place (which in some cases would take 3+ hours one way), give them the physical disc, and transit all the way back because downloading a whole game it going to take much longer than that. With internet as spotty as it is even in industrialized nations, there's gonna be a very inconsistent effectiveness to the whole ordeal.
So on the whole, Family Sharing (as originally implied) on XB1 seemed to be designed towards a very specific demographic rather than most gamers who bought their previous product, and with the details revealed as it was removed, it wasn't even close to what we hoped it would be. Mediocre all way round
Kinect/Extra $100
Now I don't see why they need to make the Kinect a required piece of hardware to come with, especially since they've now made it entirely optional (though I wasn't thrilled about it being necessary earlier on either). Not only is the Kinect largely uninteresting to me due to the number of useless features it has (there is no real appreciable time difference between saying "Xbox on" and turning it on with the controller, especially seeing as you'll usually need the controller to play anyways with the bonus of less possible fuckups. And Skype on an Xbox? Why when in game chat will do the same thing?), but given the dimensions of my usual living spaces it's also unusable unless I manage to meld with the wall. Now why would I spend an extra hundred dollars on something I have to buy, yet I never will and can never use? At least with the PS3 it's optional, which saves me a not insignificant amount of money I could spend on games or more mundane things like rent or food.
All together
So yeah, the Xbone really didn't sell it for me the way it was. Even now it's still just a noncommittal "eeeh". But the reason why I still hate the Xbone is not just because of the features and how they restricted the players, but of how they treated the whole debacle. Now granted the PS3 had a lot of the similar features, but the guys in charge at Sony had the decent sense to realize that they'd made a mistake and fixed the problem before they even previewed their new console, while Microsoft, who had several weeks to fix their problems, not only actively defended their choices but vehemently told us, their consumer base and the people who in the long run pay all their salaries, that we were wrong and didn't know what we were talking about or what we wanted. That kind of stubbornness and stupidity is the real reason why I'm the blipping conductor of the Xbone Hate Train, because when someone on a sinking ships seriously thinks that the best way to solve the problem is to set the ship on fire too, you're never going to trust another word they say no matter how much they change their tune.
