Geekisms!

On Tuesday, 21^st May, Microsoft announced the arrival of successor to its Xbox 360, the videogame console that had arguably won the war of dominance among the current generation of videogames for the past 8 years. There had been a lot of hype and build up to the day of the announcement especially since the other 2 major game console manufacturers (Sony and Nintendo) had already revealed their own products for the next generation. While Nintendo chose to pre-empt its competition by announcing and launching its console, the Wii-U a year earlier, that hasn’t exactly worked out well for it as sales are poor and video game developers are ignoring it.

The Wii U and its Touchscreen Controller

Sony announced its PlayStation 4 earlier this year but left people unsatisfied because it didn’t show off much apart from the new game controller, a few games & some questionably useful features. 3 months later people don’t know when exactly it’ll launch, how much it will cost or what the game console itself looks like.

PS4 Controller and Camera, no Console.

So everyone expected Microsoft to learn from the mistakes of its competitors and blow the socks of everyone when it revealed its own contender for the crown of next gen videogame console/living room entertainment system.

Did it deliver the above promise? Far from it! In fact, if the general reaction of everyone watching the livestream broadcast of the product launch or following the news released via social media and tech blogs could be summed up in one word, that word would be “meh”. Yes, they had a new videogame console with a suitably iconic name, the Xbox One. Yes it’s more powerful and has better hardware than the previous generation of consoles. It even looks quite classy (in my opinion, most people think it looks like an old school top loading VCR player). But all of this was expected, so what was the new stuff that was supposed to impress everyone and help steal customers from its enemies.

It has cable tv integration meaning that you can plug your set-top box/decoder to it and you’ll be able to control changing channels from the xbox using either the voice commands or the xbox controller. It can also give you recommendations of tv shows. However this feature was tested US cable decoders and there’s no guarantee that it will work with set-top boxes from other cable tv suppliers. I strongly doubt that when it launches, I will be able to plug my Dstv to it and start yelling ‘Xbox switch to African Magic Yoruba’. Not that I ever want to do that, my remote control still works perfectly and is much more preferable to yelling at my tv.

It has Skype integration which allows you to make video calls with the attached Kinect camera/microphone sensor. Pretty nice feature when you want to make a Skype call with your whole family sitting on the couch but not useful for much else. Besides, Skype was working pretty well on our smartphones and PC’s before this and nobody really asked for another way to make Video calls.

It allows you to split the screen so that you can watch tv and play games, browse the web or make Skype calls at the same time. Because either activity is not distracting enough on its own. I guess this will find some use such as Skyping with a friend for help in a game you’re currently playing or going through your social network feeds while waiting for a game to finish loading.

Watching the Hobbit while making a Skype call

What’s even surprising was that for the entire 2 hours plus event, only about 30 minutes was spent talking about games and they were supposed to be launching a video gaming console. Even the few games that they showed off, while they looked better than the current generation of games available, it was not by a great margin. Not a great departure from what we currently play every day on the Xbox 360s and PS3s we have in our homes right now. Microsoft stated that they will have more games to show off during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June but there’s no guarantee that what they’ll showcase there will be an improvement on what we've already seen.

Not a very impressive showing from Microsoft despite all the hype. It could have ended there but then More damaging news started leaking out that began to show more flaws with the videogame console before it had even launched.

Every game you buy has to be installed on your Xbox One!! Why!? I thought it was only PC games that had that requirement.

You cannot play all the games you bought for your Xbox 360 on the new Xbox One because according to Microsoft, that’s backward thinking.

Your Xbox One requires a persistent internet connection. In other words, it needs to connected to the internet periodically so it can verify that the games on it are legit and belong to you, among other things. They seem to have forgotten that more than half the world doesn’t have access to stable and affordable internet.

You cannot share your game discs with your friend or purchase used games without paying some sort of fee. While Microsoft hasn’t been exactly clear on this issue, it seems that each game cd is tied to your online game profile and if you lend it to your friend, he’ll have to either play it with your profile or you remove the game from your online profile so it becomes his own. Retailers who sell used games will most likely have to pay some fee to Microsoft to allow them resell Xbox One used games that aren’t attached to the profiles of the previous users. A very convoluted process if you ask me.

The Xbox One will also be region locked meaning if you buy your Xbox One from the US and you got some games from shop that imports from the UK then you’re out of luck because the games won’t work.

All of this might seem like people are hating on Microsoft and its new videogame but these are all valid issues. It seems like manufacturers, in their haste to turn their videogame consoles into all-in-one home entertainment systems, have forgotten that the some people are not interested in all the extras. Don’t you just miss those days where if you wanted to play a game you just plugged it in and got down to business.

So why should I be excited about the next generation of videogames if I’m going to have to jump through all these hoops and shackle myself to all these weights just to entertain myself. From my point of view, there’s no real incentive to get this instead of currently available videogame consoles. When it comes out it’ll be too expensive and I won’t be able to use most of the new features here in Nigeria because this was clearly made with the American market in mind and no regard for the rest of the world. Even there it will be a tough sell, adults who are lifelong fans might decide to go ahead and buy it but most parents with kids will look at this with all the additional expenses it will incur and immediately look for a more affordable alternative. And trust me when I say there is no shortage of cheaper alternatives which might not be as powerful or have as many feature, but are able to adequately serve as the main home entertainment system/videogame console.