:sigh: You damn internet commenters and fanboys. Look what you made me do. I haven't posted anything on here in nearly a year, and you "people" make me login, click "new post" and start typing. Well, you asked for it. Now you're going to get it. Here are my thoughts on the Xbox One reveal event, or perhaps I should say "Here are my thoughts on the flood of idiocy currently raging through the internet regarding the Xbox One reveal event."

Ok. First of all, a lot (I mean A LOT) of people are taking issue with the fact that Microsoft focused too little on gaming and too much on other stuff. While this is certainly true, I don't see a problem here. This was, first and foremost, a console event, for a console we already knew would have games. They don't need to actually show me the thing playing games. I sort of assumed it would play games. The purpose of this event was to demonstrate what sets this system apart from its competition, what services Microsoft can offer that Sony and Nintendo can't. Guess what? All of these systems will have games. For the most part, they will all have the same games. We need to know why we should play Madden and Call of Duty on Xbox One as opposed to PlayStation 4. I don't think we need to be playing those games at all, but that's another topic for another day. Let's just pretend for the moment for the sake of argument, ok?

Now, with the direction of the event admittedly being toward non-gaming entertainment, what does that matter anyway? How does the inclusion of things other than games diminish gaming? Isn't there enough room in the universe for games and other things? Most people already use their 360 for Netflix, Xfinity, Hulu, YouTube, and other things that don't involve games. Yet, somehow, they also play games on their 360. How is this possible? Doesn't the presence of entertainment apps on the console make it impossible to play games? Oh, it doesn't? Interesting...

Ok, lastly. You trolls out there have a disgusting habit of latching on to microscopic shreds of information and unsubstantiated rumors and taking them the worst possible extreme. For months now, there's been the rumor of the next Xbox requiring an internet connection at all times in order to function. Oh, how the morons feverishly typed away about how horrible that was, and how that, of course, meant that you couldn't play used games (what?). And that rumor turned out to just be the system's ability to allow games to require internet connections. Like for MMO's for example.

Since the conclusion of today's event, the internet has been overflowing with unfounded speculation of other likely made up restrictions the system will have. For instance, the fact that the Kinect has to be connected at all times. That automatically means that every game requires you to use it. Then, it turned out that wasn't the case. Then there was a rumor that every game would need to be installed and can only be installed one time, and after that, a user would need to pay a fee to install it again. While the second part of that has yet to be confirmed or denied, the first part is just common sense. The PS3 already requires games be installed. It's because of the limitations of the Blu-Ray format. The disc cannot load data while it's being read. So the data has to all be loaded beforehand. Hence, installing the game. But, of course, this automatically means that you can't install it twice. Even though that's not the case on PS3.

Another point relating to the whole installing games thing, people are whining that the 500 GB hard drive is too small if all games have to be installed. The biggest hard drive Sony sells built-in to PS3 is 500 GB, and that's only in one limited edition bundle. And no one has an issue with that. Another hard drive complaint is that the built-in hard drives will not be able to be removed and replaced. Even if that turned out to be true, which I doubt it will, (does anyone honestly think Microsoft will pass on the opportunity to sell separate bigger hard drives?) who cares? With all the cloud functionality they're touting and the ability to use external storage, it doesn't matter how big the pack-in drive is.

I think that's it for now. If I forgot something, I'll update the blog at some point. At the end of the day, fanboys are fanboys, haters are haters, trolls are trolls, and nothing I can say to them will change that. I just had to type all my thoughts out somewhere. I missed you, Antiverse.

-Chris

UPDATE: Turns out I did forget to mention one thing. Why was anyone surprised by the lack of focus on games in the first place? They've been saying since the event was announced that it would not be game-centric. The guy at the beginning even reminded everyone of that same thing, and made it clear that they'd be showing more games at E3. Which, I think, is a great move. When you're marketing a game console, it's extremely crucial to let momentum and excitement for your product build over time leading up to its launch. How can you do that when you show absolutely everything right off the bat? Sony did this with their PS4 reveal and now they have nothing to build on at E3, an event which will receive exponentially more coverage than this event did. Everyone will feel the same about PS4 after E3 as they do right now, for better or worse. By saving the games for E3, the momentum and excitement for Xbox One has nowhere to go but up. Don't get me wrong, if you already irrationally hate Xbox, nothing anyone says is going to change that. And no, I don't irrationally hate Sony. I used to love Sony unconditionally. They lost me when they announced the PS3 would be $600 and that people should get a second job to more easily afford it. Also, all the games I care about that were PS3 exclusive at one time are now multiplatform (Metal Gear, Devil May Cry, etc), and I just have no interest in any PlayStation brands anymore. It's not because I hate them, it's because I'm just not interested anymore. I'm objectively saying that I don't care about PS4, but I'm interested in seeing what Xbox One has to show at E3 because they didn't already show it.