It Was Fun While It Lasted

Well, Microsoft really took the wind out of my sails. I was all set to do this whole big exposé on how they were burning bridges with developers and alienating customers to the point that they were set up to fail spectacularly this generation, but they went ahead and recalled most of their horrible policies. No more DRM making all games online versions, no more 24 hour check ins, and no more being unable to sell and trade your games.  Well, I guess that’s it, we win! Everyone take to the streets and rejoice!

The Xbox One is no longer a train wreck on a crash course with a hurricane, but rather just the “inferior” console right out of the gate with its competitor, the PlayStation 4. The PS4 is $100 cheaper, doesn't come bundled with the mandatory camera, and has stronger hardware right out of the box. It looks bad for Microsoft still, but it looked bad for Sony at the beginning of the last generation too, and they managed to come back in the last couple of years.

However on the other side of the fight you have people like this guy who is actually defending the old Xbone policies. Most of his claims are based on wild speculation of ideas and features that were never really confirmed by Microsoft. He claims that this digital marketplace would have led to way to Steam-like sales, despite the fact that Microsoft has had a digital only platform for years (Games for Windows Live) that doesn't have periodic “Steam style” sales, and that the current Xbox marketplace is still releasing games for full price three months after release when many retailers have already lowered the price on the physical version. He also claims that the family sharing feature would have been revolutionary, allowing friends to share games over the internet. In addition to the fact that I can already share my physical discs and cartridges with literally infinite people, not just ten, that feature was never really elaborated on by Microsoft, so we don’t know what it would have actually entailed. If he thinks that Microsoft would have just allowed one out of every ten people to buy a game with no downside he is sorely mistaken, especially considering all of the other policies that were going to be implemented revolved around limiting your ability to reduce new game sales in any way.

Sadly, I fear that all of this will go down in history alongside the likes of “giant enemy crab”, and the Wii Music drummer guy as something ridiculous a company did at E3, as opposed to the gigantic breach of trust and loyalty that it was. The biggest thing to remember here is that Microsoft did not change their policies because they felt bad, or because they were being nice, they changed their policies because the PS4 was beating the Xbone in pre-orders 8 to 1, and they couldn't afford to lost that much money. They talk about listening to the consumer complaints, but the only people they really listen to are their shareholders, and they would have gone right ahead with this if they could have gotten away with it financially. In the immortal words of an anonymous IGN commenter:

“Microsoft is the abusive boyfriend. Many Xbox consumers are the girlfriend.

Microsoft had been occasionally beating his girlfriend for a while. It started light (unnecessary fees, RROD, minimal exclusives, etc.), but has become gradually more frequent. The girlfriend knows it's wrong, but has become increasingly surrendered to it. Her self-esteem is broken; she feels trapped and that this is the best she can do or even what she deserves. She has even defended Microsoft in front of friends and family who have shown concern. "He only does it 'cause he loves me." "He knows what's best for us." "You don't understand him like I do."

One day, Microsoft came home and brutally assaulted his girlfriend for no apparent reason. It was far worse than it had ever been before (DRM, online authentication, resale fees, mandatory Kinect, no sharing, etc.) Finally, the girlfriend had had enough. She packed her bags and moved out. She thought, "This is too far! Why did I let it go on so long?"

Soon she began dating again. A man named Sony, realizing the abuse of her past, welcomed her with open arms. He respected her, honored her, introduced her to new friends and experiences, and she began to remember what it was like to be happy. But Microsoft found out about the relationship, and he was a very jealous man.

After returning home from work one afternoon, the girlfriend found Microsoft, kneeling at her door, with roses in hand. "Come on, baby. Gimme anotha' chance. I swear I can change! I'll be a new man! Don't hurt me like this, baby. Remember all the good times we had togetha'?" Unfortunately, he failed to mention his real reason for being there. He didn't regret his actions. He wasn't there to apologize. The only reasons he came back was because of how much he hated the integrity of the new man courting her and because his attempts to hook-up with a rich young girl he had his eyes on was met with rejection.

But the girlfriend finally knew better. She realized the insincerity behind Microsoft's words. His intentions were not noble, not in her best interest, but his desperate attempt to save what he (thought he) had before his selfishness and anger drove her away. It was damage control, not remorse. So the girlfriend stood at a crossroad between an honest man, and an abusive liar. Who should she choose?

Who will YOU choose?”

Motion Sickness

Motion controls will never work properly. There, I said it. They’re great for fun little minigames, or for really physical things like dancing or workouts, but it will never work for hardcore gamers. I like motion controls, I really do, things like hands free and voice controls were the product of science fiction not too long ago, but now we have technology like the Kinect where we can have our motions interpreted as actions. We, as a species, are getting closer and closer to helping me realize my dream of being Iron Man.

However, as Microsoft forces everyone to own and use the new Kinect, with the idea that if everyone is guaranteed to have it, developers will actually start using it, it’s becoming more and more obvious that motion controls are not going to work for any level of advanced or competitive gameplay. The technology is getting better and better, but we haven’t seen a game yet that can make use of motion controls in a way that is engaging, accurate, and fun. The developers of Ryse, one of the Xbox One exclusives, have said in interviews that they couldn't find a way to make the Kinect gameplay“fun”, so they implemented a controller control scheme as well. This really says a lot about motion controls in general, but why couldn't they make it fun? The new Kinect is accurate enough to detect emotions and levels of stress, but they can’t make fun gameplay out of it? It’s almost like the technology doesn't really matter, which leads us to startling realization as to why motion controls will never be used for advanced gameplay; it’s not that the sensors aren't accurate enough,

It’s that humans aren't accurate enough.

Let’s try an experiment. Hold your arm out straight, parallel to the ground, not resting it on anything, and see how long you can hold that pose. Within 30 seconds you’ll start to feel some discomfort, and your arm will waver slightly. As a matter of fact I doubt that anyone could hold any pose perfectly for more than about 10 seconds. In literally any game that requires any level of skill, however, you have sequences of inputs that need to be entered precisely each time, in order to produce the same result. Take Street Fighter for example, everyone knows how to do a hadouken on a controller, and those exact actions will produce a hadouken every time, but imagine if they made a Kinect Street Fighter, and you had to do the DBZ hand motion in order to fire one. Could you do the motion one hundred times and have the motion be nearly exact every time? How about a thousand times? A million? You can’t, no one can. Even on a controller it can be difficult to enter precise commands under pressure, and that just involves the use of your fingers.

I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but the one game that I consider to be the best example of this phenomenon, and also the single best motion control game to date, is Zelda: Skyward Sword. Many people complained about the motion controls, but they work near perfectly if you know how to use them. It should be as simple as “pretend to swing a sword” but it isn’t. The system would misinterpret wind-ups as swings, and cause sword swings in the wrong direction, which depending on the enemy could cause you to be damaged or worse. That’s right, the game that I consider to be the best adaptation of motion controls to AAA games still requires you to learn how to manipulate the system in order to succeed. When it comes right down to it nothing short of actual, matrix style, full consciousness virtual reality will be able to make motion gaming feel real, and yet we keep seeing attempts being made. There’s nothing wrong with motion controls as they stand now, people seem to love dancing games, but there is no reason why it should be required for the console to function.

Please Don't Buy the Xbox One

I’m going to be doing blog posts about E3 for the next month, just so you know. This stuff is a really big deal to me, and to a lot of people, and the industry is changing in ways that we have never seen before. Next week I’m going to do a full rundown of all of the presentations, but for now, I present a little segment I like to call “Please, for the love of all things humane, do not buy an Xbox One”.

We've all heard the news about the Xbox One (hereafter referred to as the “Xbone”), about how it has to call home once every 24 hours, or it locks you out of your games, about how used games will be a thing of the past or at best price locked through “select retailers”, about how you can’t lend games to friends, since all transfers are one way and permanent, the list goes on. Obviously this thing is shaping up to be a hot pile of ass to actually use, but I still see people who are determined to buy one. I hear a number of arguments on this front, but I’m here to lay down some facts, and also to debunk several of the most commonly used defenses of the system. First, let me make my point crystal clear:

Please, please, as a consumer of products, as someone who supports a free market, as a member of a society interested in things that are beneficial to us all, do not buy the Xbox One.

This isn't about brand loyalty, this isn't about console wars, and this isn't about “winning”, this is about freedom. That’s right, freedom, freedom to play games and enjoy artistic talent without having a multinational corporation nickel and dime us every step of the way. These “features” in no way benefit the consumer; that is a fact. You can go on and on about how these restrictions don’t bother you, but that’s not the issue, the issue is that you are being asked to tolerate them for no reason. These restrictions offer no benefit to you, at all, and Microsoft is banking on the fact that the masses want to play Halo and Forza so badly that they will just eat it up anyway. They are hoping that people are literally willing to put an always on, always connected, webcam that can be mined for advertising data and recorded for the government in their living room, just to be able to play the new Halo. This is 1984 people, and if you buy into it all you are doing is proving to corporations that you will gladly hand over your rights, your privacy, and your money out of sheer, blind loyalty to an entertainment franchise.

If the Xbone doesn't fail, and I mean fail spectacularly, there is no reason why every company wouldn't start doing it. These policies make corporations money, that’s why they are implemented in the first place, and if Microsoft can get away with people not caring about these things, then Sony will do it next generation, and Nintendo the generation after that. Why wouldn't they? If a company can institute hilariously anti-consumer policies and still make just as much money, more money even thanks to those policies, why shouldn't they? This is a very slippery slope, we already have Apply tracking our movements with GPS and Google tracking our searches for advertising and Target tracking our shopping habits across the country, when does it end? When do we, as a society put our collective feet down and say enough is enough?

Please, I’m begging you, don’t support Microsoft in this madness. If you buy an Xbone, you are paying Microsoft to take your rights away, when you could just buy a PlayStation 4 and get a nearly identical experience without all of the hassle. Get informed about this stuff, and talk your friends out of it too if they are leaning towards the Xbone in November. Everyone needs to know how horrible this is, because as hilarious as it will be to see the backlash on Christmas day when Timmy takes his brand new Xbone over to Grandma’s house for dinner, but can’t play because she doesn't have internet, or when one smartass kid decides to log on to his friend’s Xbone and transfer all of his friend’s games to his own console, effectively stealing them, but when he is found out he can’t just give the games back, because the transfer is one way, those people still gave Microsoft their money, and no amount of bad press is going to take that money away. 

How to Respond to Xbone Arguments

I keep seeing people try to defend the Xbox One, and their hilariously anti-consumer policies, and it is adorable. Ignoring how ridiculous it is to defend a multinational corporation on a personal level, most of the defense points I commonly see are flat out wrong. More often than not, when I see someone defending the Xbone, they aren't actually pointing out any benefits, but rather trying to justify the problems. Here are some of the most common defenses of the Xbone, and why they don’t work the way you think they do:

- The new DRM is no worse than Steam, and everyone loves Steam!

First off, The Xbone DRM is demonstrably worse than Steam, since Steam doesn't require a constant connection. Steam has a full offline mode, and can play most games without an internet connection, any exception to that is the responsibility of the Publisher. The Xbone, however has the 24 hour check in at the system level, so Publishers/Developers can’t disable it if they want to. More importantly though is that Xbone and Steam are totally different, and can’t really be compared like that. Steam, when it was released was actually a very good thing despite the DRM. At the time, piracy of PC games actually was a really big deal, and publishers were coming up with their own versions of DRM to combat this, which actually made piracy worse because much of that DRM was intrusive and didn’t work properly. Then Steam comes along, and offers an easy, unified way of having DRM that wouldn’t break your games. Steam became a positive direction for PC gaming, which revived the platform, and led to the open marketplace we have today. Valve is kept honest by the fact that they can’t simply implement policies that make Steam inconvenient, because they could be replaced by Origin, or GOG, or any other of the dozens of PC game platforms. Microsoft on the other hand has no competition on their closed platform. No one can open up their own store on the Xbone, so their prices and their policies don’t answer to anyone but themselves.

- The new DRM will kill used games which cost publishers money, so now games will be cheaper/have sales

Used games costing publishers money is just the latest scapegoat thought up by big corporations who are hemorrhaging money to appease their angry shareholders. EA has been starting to financially tank for a while now, but instead of reevaluating their company policies, or attempting to expand with risky ventures, they cut their budgets to the bone year after year, and beg for more money by blaming boogeymen like piracy and used game sales for their failures. The truth is that modern AAA titles cost a small fortune to make, and no shortage of luck and skill to make well. They cost a lot of money, and in many cases lose money overall, but instead of trying something new or admitting defeat, it’s easier to blame something else. Why, in this environment, would those same companies then voluntarily make games less expensive? Even if these policies did save the company money, why would they lower prices that people are willing to pay? Again, a Steam comparison doesn’t work here, because those sales are the result of multiple retailers competing with each other, which won’t happen on a closed system.

- The Xbone has exclusive games I want!

It’s hard to argue with this one. If a game you want to play is exclusive to the Xbone, then it really comes down to how much money you are willing to pay, and how much abuse you are willing to take in order to play that game. The biggest (and only) games I see people clinging to are Halo and Forza. Forza is a driving game, a realistic driving game, and while I don’t claim to be a connoisseur of that genre, there seem to be many of them out there, what it does isn’t exactly unique.  As for Halo, let me make one thing clear: I have been playing Halo games for over a decade, I have nearly every achievement in every Halo game, my 360 is the Halo Reach special edition one, I still have the Halo Reach legendary edition statue on my desk, and I have put literally thousands of hours into this franchise. I love Halo, and I won’t be getting Halo 5 because I’m not willing to put up with Microsoft’s bullshit.

- I actually like the TV/Cable Box/Snap features, and would totally use them!

Anyone who wants those features should look at this. The Samsung smart TV does everything the Xbox One does except play Xbox games. It has voice and gesture controls, picture in picture, facial recognition, internet browsing, everything. It’s actually better than the Xbone, since you get access to Netflix, Hulu, etc without having to pay for Xbox Live Gold on top of the normal subscription cost, and it also doesn't spy on you for the government. Best part? The 32” version (same size as my TV) is less than the Xbone. 

- Well I have good internet and don’t sell my games, so this stuff doesn't really affect me!

In order to think that this is a reasonable thing to say you’d have to be some sort of high-functioning autistic that can’t recognize patterns. Xbox live has been down for weeks at a time in the past, as has PlayStation Network. Remember how badly Blizzard botched the launch of Diablo 3? Or EA with the new SimCity? These things happen sometimes, and there isn't anything you can do about it, but now you can’t play ANY game on your console if it happens, for literally no reason. You live in an area of the world with consistent internet and an ISP who will fix problems in a timely manner? Good for you, but you may not forever. You may have to move to a new home that doesn't have good internet service, or your ISP may go out of business and be replaced by one that doesn't give a rat’s ass about you. There are so many variables here it’s staggering, especially when you consider that the 24 hour check in is a totally arbitrary requirement in the first place. It does not offer any functions or security at all that could not be implemented in less obtrusive ways.

The biggest argument against the Xbox One is this: even if these things don’t bother you for some reason, why should you put up with them at all? They clearly offer no benefit to the consumer, and only stand to make Microsoft more money through advertising and fees, so why? If there was no competitor then maybe I could understand, but the PlayStation 4 has better hardware, 99% of the same features, doesn't have these ridiculous restrictions, and is $100 less. We all need to stop and think for a minute before blindly following any company down a road like this.

Three E's

This one isn't going to be super long, but I thought I’d give my predictions for this year’s E3.
Announcements are already starting to roll in. Harmonix announced that they are making a new music
game in Disney’s Fantasia universe. That could be really awesome, but it’s strange that they are insisting
that it is not a dance game, but the music shown so far has all been dance/club remixes of top 40 songs.
It’s also Xbox exclusive, but will be on both the 360 and the One. That whole project just confuses me,
but let’s move on to some predictions.


Nintendo:


Nintendo has already leaked a lot of what they are going to be announcing. We’re going to see Smash
Bros 4, new Zelda, new Mario Kart, a new 3D Mario, and more info on the Wind Waker HD remake
at least. There will probably be more information about titles that are coming out sooner as well, like
Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, and Pokemon X & Y. In lieu of a full presentation, Nintendo is doing an hour long
Nintendo Direct video that they will air on Tuesday morning. This has the benefit of being prerecorded,
so we won’t have to deal with any embarrassing stage-flailing that we tend to find at E3. I’m predicting
that Nintendo will have at least one out-of-left-field announcement, probably whatever Retro Studios
(the team that made Metroid: Prime) is working on. The thing that Nintendo needs to do however, is
give us concrete info on their new unified account system for the 3DS and WiiU. The WiiU’s biggest
weakness is its incomplete online system, and lack of account tracking.


Microsoft:


Microsoft is easily investing the most money into the event, and stand to lose the most after their
laughable Xbox One announcement. Their reps have been talking to the media, and calling the current
information about the Xbox One “Incorrect and Incomplete”. This seems to imply that their policies
may be changing, in lieu of the public outcry, but I doubt we’ll see too many of the “features” removed,
rather they’ll be rebranded. Microsoft is claiming that they won’t be talking about TV features in their
90 minute presentation, but let’s face it, they don’t have 90 minutes of games available to show without
some serious padding. I’m willing to bet that most of their exclusive game announcements are going to
be Kinect minigames and uninspired sequels, but I guarantee that they will use the hype wave caused
by the announcement of Halo 5 or whatever to slowly sneak in details about their awful DRM and
advertising plans.


Sony:


Sony has been a tough nut to crack this year. We haven’t really heard much from them since their
console announcement conference back in February. We know about a bunch of new features of the
console, and several exclusive games, but most of the details are missing. At E3 we’re definitely going
to get a full reveal of the console and its features. It’s possible that Sony is planning to implement DRM,
security, or worse in line with what Microsoft is doing, but has been keeping quiet about it. Sony’s
presentation is a whopping 2 hours long, and they’ll need something to fill that time, so new information
is going to be plentiful. A new, slim version of the Vita maybe?