Today, yes. In a few years' time? That access-it-anywhere feature might be huge.
Look, I understand how "playing the long game" can sound like a convenient cover-up for a product that flops, but 1) Xbone has not even shipped 2) shit is going CRAZY in this industry and the way people play games is changing dramatically.
E3 was a meaningful event to be sure, but what happened there did not set in stone the next 5 years of the gaming industry.
How is the way people are playing changing so dramatically? And I mean specifically console / pc gamers. I know for me the big difference is I don't really game with groups of friends anymore. I do play online, but I also hardly ever play online with friends. The big issue everyones time has become so limited. For me I still kind of game the way I always have, I have a gaming area, it has my gaming PC, and my consoles. Most of my friends are the same way, we don't move to different locations of the house to game. None of my friends really play mobile / facebook games, or the ones we do don't last. And I still feel like they don't really compete with big console gaming. They compete with our time, but that is really it, and X1 won't really be doing anything better in that regard, especially since I can still play those mobile games even without a connection. But I'm not trying to play Forza 5 while I'm waiting for a movie to start in a theater, I'm playing plants vs zombies on an ipod touch (digital purchase without internet connection)
I think the big limitation of big console gaming is still the console, and that is one thing that PC gaming has always had as a leg up on consoles. I can play my pc games on a multitude of PC's out there, I can play on my laptop, I can play on my friends PC, or my 2nd PC in my wife's room.
Even the new consoles are still tied to that one single box. Yes with Microsofts system I can play on someone elses X1, but that is still just a single big box that I can play on. And ultimately I can still do the same thing with my PS3 / PS4 either with a retail disc, or with my account and digital purchases. I already do that with PS3 and Vita, and if I wanted to I could load my account on a friends PS3 and play my digital games.
If gaming is becoming more ubiquitous I would think Microsoft would be investing in the game developers and not necessarily hardware. Like perhaps work on solidifying a standard that other hardware manufactures could build for. Just like a Blu-ray player. I think that is something this industry could really use, and something that I think would truly help gaming in general. I can buy a blu-ray and play it on any player and the same thing with my digital purchases. I can play my Ultraviolet movies on my roku, PS3, tablet, or directly on my smart TV. And yes I know that is more difficult because of the power required to play next gen games, but those are breakthroughs I could get behind.