Why Xbox 180 is great and pessimists should calm down

Ah, the digital future. At first it’s here, now it’s gone- as most people think. After Microsoft’s announcement of abandoning the DRM, the disc-based used game support, the removal of authentication, the removal of region locking, the digital sharing plan and adding the requirement to constantly have your disc in the disc tray to play a game, a lot of people started cheering, some didn’t change their minds, and some even viewed this as a bad thing. At first, I started worrying. It made me think that we have destroyed the single chance for a better gaming environment, but then some things suddenly struck my head, I’ll tell about that later. While, I understand that people view the removal of digital sharing and the disc requirement as a bad thing , I can disagree with the removal of other features.

First off, NOT being always online means you are making your console more accessible to the internet-less public and it means the console will work EVERYWHERE possible( before the announcement it was said the Xbox One would work only in certain countries at launch. The always online requirement could have also been the reason for the 2014 release date in Asia, but that remains to be seen . ( http://pixelenemy.com/e3-20... ). It also doesn’t add another layer of dependency (the first layer being electricity), since , who knows, the servers just might crash or get hacked.( even though Microsoft’s Azure servers are said to be reliable and powerful, first time I’ve heard that about a Microsoft product)

Authentication- now this is just baby-sitting. This means you are alienating the entire military of the world, like one service member said.( http://pixelenemy.com/us-na... ) It’s also very intrusive and annoying. ( well, unless it can be automated, but as far as I’ve heard, that feature wasn’t present)

Region-locking means you can’t access the servers of another region in a multiplayer game, which, everyone will undoubtedly agree, totally sucks. No further explanation needed.

Support for disc-based use games. Just great, I guess. So far I’ve heard that a publisher CAN make it impossible to share their games if they want to, so what’s to complain? ( Dear Gamestop, people STILL hate you, by the way.)

Now, let’s look at some of the recent changes in the computer industry as a whole- Amazon implemented DRM in the EPUB format( E-Book) . At first, this was met with anger, but now look at the results- the prices came down and, thus, the rate of piracy has declined. Tough in the short term, successful in the long term.

You might think it was a mistake to remove the Always On requirement, but now let’s look at ANOTHER example.

Steam, the word that PC gamers love to hear. It’s NOT always online, but it’s ecosystem is so brilliant , just like Cliff Bleszinski recently said. At first it was met with dread , but look now- it’s just marvelous , and it grows each and every day. Each. And. Every. Freaking. Day.

So why not implement this kind of software feature in the Xbox One( and PS4) ? Then digital sharing might be possible, right? ( I heard Steam is about to have that feature included) Plus, I believe this kind of program will work much better with consoles, due to the bigger audience, the consoles’ features and also due to the fact that Sony and MS are technically far bigger and more capable than Valve.

I DON’T want console gaming to die out. I don’t want console gamers to be left in the dust.

So, if I’m right, let’s SEND THIS MESSAGE to Microsoft( and Sony) , alright? A Steam-like environment. That’s what we want. TRYING won’t hurt anyone , not by a long shot , and I’m sure this will yield immensely positive results in the long term.

If MS and Sony succeed, what can this mean? More games, less freaking microtransactions, less gimmicky ‘add-ons’, lower prices, better income for the developers, less developer closures, more stable gaming industry as a whole, INDIE growth baby! and much more.