After watching the whole E3 I have many conclusions and I see a lot of people who (in my honest opinion) are mistaken, and I think I can give another point of view while trying to be objective, I think this is the appropiate thread because the fanboy war hasn't started yet (thank god)
First, the whole idea of Xbox Done and that kind of jokes where also done when they announced the Live gold for 360, the people on the forums were saying "I'm moving to PS3" "in no way I'm gonna pay for online" and blablabla, and now there are tons of people who said that and are playing on Xbox, and even though I have a PS3 I know that online on Xbox is better, BUT if I had to chose again I would go to Ps3 again because it was free.
Now, lets take a look why the online connection is required and the advantages and disadvantages:
Required for:
1-Used games control
2-Easier to sell products, consoles are going to be services in this generation
3-People will feel more conditionated to play online
4-The whole console becomes a service
1-The topic of used games isn't as simple as you should be able to do with your game whatever you want, this is true, but to an extent, it should be this way if the people who buys it isn't screwed because of that; I (almost) always buy new games and pisses me of watching a month later the game that cost 60$ when I bought it, at 25$ used with the same features that the original game.
The question is, how this could be solved?
-Online pass
-Booking incentives
-Used game activation cost
The online pass is something that I don't like personally because it only make the game you bought used a bit more expensive.
The MS idea or charging users to use the game is horrible becuase that eliminates the whole propierty of your own game and that won't stop the used games never, it will only be even more expensive that in the online pass.
So, in my opinion what companies should do is to add a lot of incentives for purchasing the game new, like costumes, expansions, characters, free future DLCs (that way people would think twice about selling their games), there are tons of thing they could give to the new buyers to give the reasons to purchase the game,the idea of charging the people for used games wont change anthing, it would only put things more difficult.
Another thing to mention is that what consoles are going to be this next-gen, it's going to be all about services and I think that MS is a step ahead here because they idea is to create a media center, a simplier PC for the whole house, offering Music, Tv, sports, massive interaction between players and thus resulting in a "more" than a console, they want that all the people in the house has some kind of interest in the Xbox and be abe to sell them the services they want, but all this come at a price in my opinion because the whole idea of gamer is disappearing, the feeling of purchasing big demos which obviously feel kind of unfinished is going to be dominant in the nex gen, just like happens in Injustice, the game feels unfinished, because what do you think that they only need a week and a half to develop a character? No, the content was already made and the idea was to offer a "service" to the game for 5$ the charater, very very sad.
Just like Killer Instinct is going to do, play the game free and if you want you can buy it all but it's going to be more expensive that a game right now, because the digital content has less taxes, gives more money to the publisher and the developer and the downloaded content CAN'T be sold, the result for the next gen is games more expensive, unfinished at first, many will be free to play (that way they are attractive to all).
The whole idea of console for $ervice$ is awful for me, I want to purchase FULL games, if I enjoy the FULL experience I will kindly expend my money on bs downloadable content to support the company (like the voices I purchased from Blazblue, that I haven't even used), but the idea of not being able to play a game like Injustice beacause the game IS unfinished and I don't have all the characters to be able to select my main is digusting.
About people feeling conditionated to play online is a very smart idea, because you feel that you need to play online because you spent money on the service and the huge interaction between players is going to reach a point where the DLCs and the feeling of having the same experience that other players is going to be very important, again , this idea is pretty awful if used for $ purposses (as I think that M$ and $ony are thinking) because that is going to devaluate the single player experience, and the games are going to be less than in this generation becasue the support is going to be bigger.
Again the example of Injustice, in 1995 Netherealm after doing MK started to develop the next one and they had to offer the full experience if they wanted the people to bought their next game, but right now, they can affor doing a game and spend 7-8 months selling ALREADY made and new content to the game, this is going to be very, very important in the future, there are going to be WAY less games with WAY more content.
This can be good or bad depending the content and the interest in people, because that content won't be costumes, will be characters, moves, gems (ejem ejem Capcom) but there is no one to blame but ourselves as a players and costumers for only buying content that SHOULD be on the game and ignre content like voices or costumes that are on the store like "c'mon support us", if people during this genwouldn't have purchased a single time the DLC character from MK9 Injustice would have come full.
In the end, the best service goes to..............Steam
Regarding consoles $ony lokks like they are going to be more focusred on the traditional gamer not making the console a media center (thank god) and if I had to chose between this and M$ I would purchase the Ps4.
Also, all the people thinking in purchase the XBOX ONE think that the console you bought does NOT belong to you, because you can't do what you want with it, no internet no play, simply as that, going to the beach and wanna play, no way, lost you internet connection on saturday9 p.m becasue of ethernet broken, no play during sunday, have that in mind...
, they deserve to get pirated, maybe 4 or 5 months after release hackers make a crack for pirated copys and they will look dumb, same that happened to the 360, in Venezuela over 70% of the xboxes are chipped/cracked for pirated software