So Microsoft had a press conference today and announced their new system, and it's called Xbox One! Which is confusing since the original Xbox is technically the first, or the one, ah whatever, I'm just going to call it Xbox. It's also huge and looks like a VCR from 1989!
I really liked the controller for the 360, it's one of my favorite controllers ever so it's nice to see it retain the same shape and overall design. It looks like they improved the d-pad which is nice to see, considering the 360 d-pad was completely useless, don't even bother trying to play a 2D fighter on that thing.
Now here's where things get interesting. When you buy a game you must install the entire game on the hard drive and put in a code similar to what you would do on your PC, you must be connected to the internet when you do this. You don't always have to be connected to the internet, but it must connect at least once every 24 hours. So if you want to play your games offline or if you have no internet, you are out of luck.
The games are essentially tied to your Xbox live account, meaning that if you want to let a friend borrow your game, the only way to play it is to log on that console with your own account.
I think this is a bad move by Microsoft, they've basically killed the used game market. Now I'm all for the death of EB Games/ Gamestop, their used game business model is really evil. It just sucks that you can't sell your game to your friend or on eBay if you wanted to. It looks like there will be a way to sell the key code but this whole blocking used games thing does not sound good. You will have to pay a fee to play a used game on your system, but who get's that money? Microsoft or the publisher?
Also, it is not backwards compatible with the 360, meaning you can't play your old games on the new Xbox. It's not a major loss, but for people that like to sell the old system and upgrade it's nice to still be able to play your old titles.
Overall, I wasn't too impress with the new Xbox press conference. The not being able to play a game without installing it plus paying a fee on a used game really rubbed me the wrong way. This is supposed to be the next evolution in video games, show me something new. Not just the same Call of Duty, but with dogs this time! They barely showed any games and concentrated mostly Kinect (which i really don't care for) and on other multimedia features like TV(you can change channels by voice command or making hand movements, hooray, I guess.). I've been gaming since 1986, every generation there has been some kind of jump in graphics or how you interact with games, so show me something new Microsoft. Show me some games, we want games!
