Take my advice folks. "Committing" now is pointless. You will commit when the money leaves your hands. Right now you can only have an opinion of preference. Why give either company any commitment?
Although I'm a big Xbox fan, I've owned other consoles before. I share everyone's concerns about the One, although not for exactly the same reasons. I'll go through them one at a time.
First and foremost, there is the price. Hey, I'm cheap. It takes a lot to motivate me to part with my money. A cheaper entry price certainly appeals to me. But the important question is [i]why[/i] is the PS4 cheaper? Because they unbundled their technology. They took the Eye out if the picture. So for comparable equipment, it's down to a $40 difference. Since I'm likely to want the whole package, that's not a big enough difference to push me one way.
What about the Eye and Kinect? There is a lot of pushback about the Kinect being required. I'm not sure I share this concern. Why not require it? How else do you ensure developers actually use this extremely interesting technology? It's only irritating because as an optional add-on, it leads to annoying gimmick functions. A developer cannot afford to put to much into it at the risk if alienating too many gamers that chose not to opt in. Even though I still prefer a controller, I for one would like to see something come of this.
Then of course there is the on-line requirement. I cannot remember the last time I played while not being on-line. It seems to be a pointless worry in this day and age. Of course it's not just the being connected. It is what Microsoft plans to do with that.
The DRM tools supplied by the XB1 are unnerving to say the least. They've told us that we can still sell and buy used games. That's a good thing, but their system leads us to question what the cost will be. What they need to understand is that I only have what I have to spend on games. It won't change much year to year. They won't magically create more revenue. They'll just move it into different hands. If the plan is to cut the pie differently, go ahead. Knock yourselves out. If they believe they can create a bigger pie, or a new pie, they are sorely mistaken.
Many of you are upset about the lack of ability (as of this point) to borrow or lend games. I have almost never done much of this, so I don't care much. There is part of this that appeals to me though. Right now, I have two 360's in the house. We have to make choices about which machine is the primary for any particular game. With DLC, and other stored parts of the game, it isn't always a good idea to go between consoles. With the sharing with family function, that is no longer a concern. One copy of the game covers both locations. How cool would that be to play Destiny with my son without split screen or buying two copies?
In the end, there is the biggest issue: my friends. It doesn't matter what I think if all my friends go one direction, I'm likely going to go that way too. I am a social gamer at heart. Some games are great by myself, and I love those too. But I love playing with people, and starting from scratch on a friends list doesn't sound like much fun.
So what am I going to do? I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait until we learn more. I'm going to wait and see if Microsoft figures out how to market better. I'm going to wait until I see where the crowd goes. I'm going to wait until the game that most motivates me to upgrade (Destiny of course) is available. So I've got a lot of time to think this through. And in the end, as I've said before, it'll probably be choice of two great machines. But great or not, there'll be no committing until I have too.
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Preordered the Xbox 1. Money has left my hands!