originally posted in:Comet
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[b]tl;dr at the bottom[/b]
Today was a fantastic day to internet. Aside from National Signing Day being today (this is sports related for those of you who are comfortable under your non-sports rock), the internet burned with a bright white-hot rage as rumors about Microsoft's upcoming console shook them to the core. My Facebook and Twitter feeds were full of rage-filled entertaining posts; the same goes for game-related message boards.
And who can blame them? I'm not a fan of "online only" play or DRMs...or any of that stuff, either but what bothers me most is that I see people threaten to abandon console gaming and "to/stick with Steam."
Regardless of your opinions on Steam (I think it's a great service) or your opinion on Console vs PC gaming [url=http://i.imgur.com/Ytl7W.jpg](inb4 PC Master Race)[/url], doesn't this threat seem a little asinine? As far as I understand it, Steam uses DRMs to prevent the sale of secondhand games and it ties any content purchased to the purchaser's account. As far as I understand the rumors that circulated today - and the ones surrounding Sony's next console, that we heard about a few weeks ago - this would mean that console games would adopt a similar approach. I've seen the argument that "MS/Sony wouldn't have sales the way that Steam does." That's possible but unless anyone here is a fortune teller, nobody knows for sure.
[I](And if you are a fortune teller, please PM me next week's winning lottery numbers!)[/I]
I'm not knocking Steam and I';m not knocking those who choose PC gaming over consoles. This is a legitimate question that I have: [b]what's the difference? [I]Why is this threat an actual thing?[/I][/b]
Oh yeah, someone mentioned on Twitter earlier that the rumor was busted. This is the first opportunity I've had to sit at a computer since I read about those rumors but this discussion still has merit whether or not the rumor was busted, as it's a discussion that we will likely have several times over in the future.
[quote]tl;dr ([url=http://www.doesoustillsuck.com]per Butane123's request[/url]): Why do people protest DRMs by threatening to switch to a service that also uses DRMs?[/quote]
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I'm not buying another Xbox product at all because they're butchering the hardcore gaming community. As far as I can tell, the only new features on the Xbox are designed for casuals (like Kinect) or just hardware upgrades which are desperately needed. This trend of killing off the hardcore community by Microsoft is starting to worry me. First they casualize Halo, then they casualize Gears, next the entire console is going to be casualized by being focused on Kinect? Count me out