NiPah said:
I disagree with you on two levels, first the easy one;
While it is true that linking to Amazon will help sales (not much), it is more important to site your sources and give evidence of what you're talking about. Journalistic integrity is more important then preventing the small number of people who bought the system and would not have if not given said link.
Second disagreement; When the hell did Microsoft become the WBC, the Xbox One is not spreading lies about the Holocaust, it's just a new console with really shitty DRM and some admittedly anti-consumer practices. The Escapist is an online news magazine, it's not in the business of crusading against the evils of DRM and consumer rights, they are in the business of educating consumers so they make more educated choices. Stop this nonsense about Microsoft winning or not winning, the only way to beat practices like invasive DRM is to educate consumers, not by hiding links from them, and certainly not zealotry that attacks a staff member for simply providing a link.
I guess you're right on both counts, with one slight qualification on your second point: Educating consumers just plain doesn't work.
Microsoft only cares about the bottom line. If consumers don't buy the Xbox One, Microsoft may be forced to change their business plan, like when EA recently gave up on Project Ten Dollar. (The $15 million they made from on-disk DLC was apparently a drop in the bucket, and the damage to their PR and the fact that people were just playing their games online less was seen as more important, apparently.)
If consumers DO buy it, ESPECIALLY people with the money to waste on being an Early Adopter, the whales, I.E. the people AAA is desperately trying to appeal to right now, the audience segment they want so badly that they're willing to throw all of us gamers and fans under the bus en masse and DESTROY THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL PROPERTY... Microsoft will make tons of money and the other console manufacturers will jump on the bandwagon. And once that becomes normal and sane, it'll never go back to being a consumer-friendly industry ever again.
So no, it is not at all silly to describe this in terms of Microsoft "winning." But if Microsoft wins, it won't be Nintendo and Sony that lose. It'll be all of us, all gamers, all consumers. Forever.
(Edited heavily because I was tired and angry and rambling in the first draft and it was an incoherent mess. Sorry about that. Also, full disclosure: Xbox 360 is pretty much the only console I play these days, usually for Borderlands II, though I do own a WII. I game on PC when I'm not productivitying on PC.)
