So here is my take on the upcoming Xbox One and PS4. The Xbox One has some well documented problems. These primarily revolve around the utterly strange concept Microsoft keeps trying to drive down our throats in that we want to talk to our TVs. When are they going to learn? People don’t want to talk to things. If so, I would be dictating this right now. It is not natural. We don’t even talk on our phones anymore. This obsession to be “right” about the Kinect drove up the price and turned off the gamer audience. If the hope was to get the causal gamer / TV user to be the primary audience, they blew that with the price point. People bought Wiis because they were cheap. They are not going to drop $500 bucks for this in the numbers Microsoft wants.

The Xbox Ones problems have little to do with used games and “always on” technology. The US has 72% broadband adoption, and growing. The future of the cloud and working from home demands this to grow to over 90%, probably before the end of this decade. That means MS is hitting the 90% use case of the people they think will buy an XBO. I think this includes me and every one of my friends that has a 360. The 360’s compelling advantage has always been live, and everyone I know has live. What does live mean today? Always On and broadband. For us the proposed changes will have zero impact here. In addition, they think offering the compelling immersive living room experience will bring in a larger entertainment market share than the 360 that was more game focused. I think this is a great story; too bad MS did possibly the worst job of marketing this ever with inane focus on Kinect.

They also totally blew the marketing / explanation on the used game front, allowing Sony to sucker a lot of people. First off – no DRM on a PS4. Really? Does the PS3 have DRM? Yes! You have to have the disc in to play. Can you make a copy of the disc and have it work? No. This is the definition of DRM! I can’t believe how many people fell for this. However, because Microsoft hedged their bets with discs, they left themselves wide open. They should have had no disc and marketed the system as a modern device and ecosystem that doesn’t require any discs, just like people are loving steam on their PCs. In any event, I would not be rushing out and hugging the company that invented the CD root kit.