Agent Icebeezy said:
To me, it's about ideals, and where they want to go with them. Noboby is going to beat Microsoft when it comes to functionality and service for their platform. I don't watch movies so the format war doesn't mean shit to me. I love to play games online. All the areas that matter to me, Microsoft has them covered. It took XBL and the Controller S for me to convert though
Interesting. It's about ideals for me, too, but it's because of MS' ideals and their intentions for the market that I
don't want to support them in the upcoming generation. I'm strongly opposed to the entire concept of microtransactions (the idea that I will have to pay an extra fee to buy
armor for my fucking horse in Oblivion, which was mentioned in a recent EGM, turns my stomach). I feel it opens the door for developers to milk consumers by dribbling out content that would have traditionally shipped with the game as post-purchase downloads. (The horse armor is a case in point.) I'm also not terribly fond of the idea of downloads replacing games on fixed media for a variety of reasons (see my comments on Steam, if you haven't already), and that's part of the long-term MS agenda, too - the revamped XBL Arcade is another step in that direction. So that's something I'm not inclined to support, either, just on general principles. Last but not least, charging $50 a year for a glorified peer-to-peer service plus stat tracking that ranges from the superfluous to the obnoxious (no, I don't
care which X360 games you own, what your 'Gamerscore' is, or how many 'achievements' you've accumulated in your games, and if you're a stranger,
my gaming habits are none of your damn business, either) is something that still doesn't sit well with me. So I sort of feel like giving MS my cash this coming gen would be helping fund their efforts to shift the industry in directions I really don't want to see it go. That pretty much leaves me supporting Sony and Nintendo by default. Of course, MS
could pull a total 180 (no pun intended), offer a free, no-frills peer-to-peer matchmaking service, and give this big push for downloadable content and microtransactions the axe, in which case you'd see me supporting them again wholeheartedly.
(And yes, for the record, I
am aware that there have been rumblings from the Sony camp about things like downloadable content and microtransactions. To be honest, though, they've been making noises like that for awhile now, and none of it has amounted to anything. Honestly, I think the only reason they've been pushing it as far as they have is because with MS selling third parties on the idea of DLC as a potentially huge moneymaker, Sony more or less
has to say, 'Us too!' if they want to maintain interest. If MS were to abandon the whole DLC/microtransactions thing tomorrow, I suspect Sony would follow suit not long after.)