In regards to the entire Xbox announcement today, I have to say that while many people are out there cheering, I feel betrayed by the company. Sure, people can now sell their games back to a company that I choose not to support (not going into my big old rant). But in doing so, they've killed one of the best offers I've seen in ages in the gaming community. They've killed the family sharing feature. And by family, that meant "any 10 people you so choose," an Xbox family if you will. And before people try to counter with it, I'm aware of the two active game limit. Still an incredibly bold feature that is currently dead in the water.
They've also ended up killing the requirement of not needing a disc in the tray to play games. Part of the idea of the Kinect being always-on was that you could come in, sit on the couch, talk to the Xbox, and be in your game or consuming your media without setting foot near the console itself. I don't want to have to get up, walk over, and pop in a new disc. I want to be able to jump between games at will as I can with PC. And, a minor annoyance, disc based DRM means the disc must be in the tray and spinning. Which produces unnecessary noise from the console itself. I want silence from my system.
Then there's the whole aspect that this could have ended up being a big push for consumer rights when it comes to owning media. We've been moving forward over the past few years with systems like Ultraviolet video and the like, allowing users to rip their content to supported devices. In the past, that was 100% illegal to do with a copyrighted product no matter how you rationalized it. Now I can load videos to my phone, tablet or laptop without a worry. Steam does something similar; you own the game and can play it on any system by downloading it to that machine. I want to see that in the console market. No need to take a disc to a friend's place and yet we can still sit down and play a game I own together.
I was really looking forward to seeing this develop more. I figured Microsoft would tweak the policy before launch. Let's be honest, they did a terrible job in how they announced everything. I hardly heard them mention the family feature at all during E3, and don't remember it at all during their keynote (though I could just be blanking on that portion). But I was hoping they would still find a way to keep these amazing features as part of the console. Instead, they decided to renege on what they've said and just do an about face on the whole subject. Of course all of this can, and probably will slightly, change again before launch.
Anyways, that's my view on the whole announcement today. Sorry for smacking people in the face with my wall of text. I'm not normally one for this many words on an internet forum. I've slipped back into my old video game journalist habits.
tl;dr - Brian is sad and wishes Microsoft had bigger testicles.
