I'm not so sure about murdered the xbox one, but they certainly injured it greatly.
I suspect there are a lot of super casual bro-gamers who will buy the new Xbox out of habit for their COD and FIFA and Madden playing.
But then you have people like me. I'm a gamer across both the PC and various consoles. The last two gens, the Xboxes were my primary console and until Sony and Microsoft started talking about their respective next consoles, I had just assumed I would buy the Xbox One and not the PS4, but seeing the two options mostly in the light now, well, I've pre-ordered a PS4 on Amazon and have no intention of buying an Xbox One. This decision is likely to directly spill over to at least half a dozen people I play games with if not more.
Microsoft really fucked themselves with the positioning of the Xbox One and at this point I don't see how they'll be able to fix it in time for launch. I'm sure they'll still sell millions of units, but this is still an epic failure that I'm pretty positive will cost them their current leadership role in the space for the next gen.
24 hour checkin (always-online DRM) and restricting game resale/trade is huge. The former has been adequately demonstrated by PR catastrophes like Sim City 2013 and Diablo 3, the latter is also very important to a lot of people who still buy discs.
We'll have to wait and see how this translates into sales, but Sony won a lot of points for not caving to publishers on these issues.
I suspect a lot of gamers also aren't keen on the Kinect, so the extra $100 for it is another downside.
Well, from a collector's perspective, the xbox one is a dead end.
Unless they make a very overt overture towards the end of the life of that console ...
In 15-20 years time, when the servers go down and the lights go out. It will be a useless piece of plastic.
Hell, in 15-20 years time even the non-collectors who hung onto their consoles will be screwed.
Unless the pirates manage to save it from obsolescence.
I think that depends on how good the new kinect is which comes bundled. The hardware is near identical. The used games issue and 24-hour checkins probably won't be a deal breaker for level headed people so I'd say this is still up in the air.
Not to defend the Xbox One's many faults, but the answer is very simple:
Because they want to play the games that are only available on it. Or they want to play games with their friends on xbox live. Those can be very powerful motivators, games and friends aren't commodities.
The trick is a LOT of people on twitter/etc are basically saying screw MS right now, so if that holds than playing online MP with your friends will go Sony's way. That leaves only exclusives, and beyond Halo and Killer Instinct I haven't heard of much that would sell many copies.
if the xbox one receives more bad press than it already has, some publishers of games might start to think that an exclusive with xbox one is not going to give them a large enough customer base!
I certainly hope this happens. I for one, hate platform exclusive games - it means vendor lock in, and it is anti-consumer.
I personally really like the multitasking aspect of it. As well as the TV integration with kinect control. That easily justifies a $100 price difference in my opinion.
We aren't even sure if the TV integration works yet, even in the US. Every other attempt at it has failed (Google TV, etc). Sony's video after their conference showed multitasking while playing a game, on par with what Microsoft has showed us so far. So if those were your only points to pick an XBone over a PS4, you may want to hold on a second.
Problem is that that's all that the Kinect is good for. It does more bad than it does good. Gaming wise it has been a disaster. Also, the specs of the PS4 are FAR superior to the XBOX One's. Definitely worth much more than the $100. I can't believe they priced it at $400, almost everyone was expecting north of $600 due to their specs. Golden move.
Sony did a terrible job advertising it, but PlayTV filled exactly the same role that this fills, and had dvr functionality, along with the same eternal hardware required requirements. Im surprised that they haven't done something similar for the ps4 yet.
The feature set falls under 'less powerful'. The two machines are basically the same thing. The only notable difference is that the xbox has a forced kinect bundle. Everything else is barely noticeable except for some performance numbers.
