As the tiny handful of people who read this blog are aware, I am not a console gamer. The only gaming consoles I've ever owned were all Nintendo consoles, so naturally I wasn't particularly excited about the announcement of Microsoft's latest incarnation of the X-Box...until I realised what a cock-up the thing was.
Right away, Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by spending 30 minutes of the X-Box One reveal speaking about Kinect and TV rather than talking about, you know, actual games. Already they've created the impression that this isn't a gaming console, but rather a set-top box for TV that happens to play games.
And the games themselves? Endless sequels...Call of Duty, Halo, Assassins Creed, Battlefield, endless EA Sports titles...aren't you tired of this already? And when you're first rep on stage is someone from EA, who are probably the most hated company in the industry, that doesn't exactly make a good first impression.
Really, I have to ask: are people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a console just to play prettier versions of the same tired genres as before? When it comes to the systems's drawbacks, you can mention how the X-Box One charges you a fee to play used games, or how it's always not backwards compatible, or how it's required to connect to the internet every 24 hours, but the one thing that will damn system will be the games. You'd think the industry would have realised from the sliding software sales that maybe, just maybe, gamers were tired of playing endless rehashes of CoD or Halo.
I hope this system bombs hard, because it's the shock the industry needs to realise how badly they've buggered things up.
