Sargonas42 said:
You buy a computer. You can connect that computer to the internet to do a number of entertaining and educational things, like read newspaper articles or download funny cat pictures, but you can also use it when it is NOT connect to the internet to write documents, play games and look at funny cat pictures a friend gave you.
Now, a game company that has been making games for the computer suddenly announces that all their games from this point in the future will require a constant internet connection to be played and they will no longer be selling physical copies of the video games, everything must be downloaded from their website. There will be those gamers who have no problem with this, because their computer is ALL READY connected to the internet 24/7 and they have a horrible habit of losing the installation disks of their games.
BUT there will be people who can't connect to the internet all the time or don't like what the game company is doing and so they will choose not to continue buying their games. In this instance, the computer user STILL has a computer that functions, all that they are being denied is the ability to play games from that particular developer. And, for them, there are other companies out there that make games that don't require always-on internet connect and are sold via disk. They can continue to be entertained.
You buy a console and the story changes. A console's main purpose, despite Microsoft and Sony's attempts to make them do other things, is to play games. Consoles leveled the game-playing field with standardized hardware and universal operating systems to limit the bugs and glitches that were caused by thousands of different hardware/software/operating system configurations. Now, anyone who got a console had access to the same games and had the same chance at a quality experience. Consoles made gaming accessible to EVERYONE! But a console that requires always-on internet service actually DENYS gamers that accessibility. It is also denying people who PAID +$400 for the system a chance to USE that system.
According to Microsoft's own press releases, those who did not have a reliable internet connection would not be able to play their games after 24 hours of the last check in, regardless of whether or not they were on their own Xbox One. On an unplugged computer you still have ways to entertain yourself, on an unplugged XBox One you do not. If you don't want people on the internet spying on you while you use your computer, you unplug the Ethernet cable and after 24 hours the computer still works. You don't want people spying on you while you play a video game on the XBox One, you unplug it and after 24 hours you have a glorified paper-weight.
Valve also does not OWN the computer gaming network. It has a nice little corner stall in it, but it is not the only seller of games. And there will be gamers who don't like the new updates, who don't like the family sharing thing and they will leave, they will take their money and go else where; some legal, some questionably legal, some not. There are also a slew of older games that can be played, even without the use of a mod that makes your hard-drive think it is 1989. Computers are backwards compatible, it just may take a little more tweaking on the player's part to get the game going. Consoles, however, are not; not anymore at least.
The reason people got annoyed with Microsoft's "innovation" was that no one wanted them. No one wanted to buy console games digitally. No one wanted a digital sharing system for console games. No one wanted the ability to access their console games at a friend's house on the friend's console. Why? Because consoles are PORTABLE! They are easily taken from one location to another, a feature at the very HEART of console gaming! Until the invention of laptops, it was difficult to take a computer to a friend's house. The innovations Microsoft introduced were not things CONSOLE GAMERS wanted....
...they were the things COMPUTER GAMERS wanted!