The Xbox One has been an announcement like none I remember. While often consoles reveals are judged on basis of their own confines such as, "Oh I like the controller" and "Urgh, I hate the motion control", this has been something different entirely. If you follow games journalism or even just frequent a forum, you will know how big an issue this has become. If you don't, let me catch you up. Journalists are in fervent disagreement about various aspects of the console. The hottest debate going on at the moment is about the seemingly uneven comments made by Microsoft about used games and DRM. It seems as if Microsoft are currently trying to diminish the used game market by locking discs to a user, thus making a used game nearly useless to another customer unless they pay an extra fee to unlock it for their account. On top of that, the company seems to be at odds with itself about how online the console is going to be. These are all hot topics and everyone is at odds with one another about it. However, I have remained fairly confident in Microsoft's abilities to sell the console. E3 is going to be a very revealing show and it has the potential to shake everything up. However, even if things stay as they are, there are a ton of reasons why the Xbox could end up beating its competition.
5. If The Xbox One Loses, Microsoft Still Win
One of the main reasons people are so worried about the Xbox One is because they believe that Microsoft are exerting an aggressive level of control over consumer practices. So the default response to this seems to be that they will go to the PC market where distribution is freer, there are more interesting games on the market and a consumer is able to control their system. These are all great things and are why the PC could become a powerhouse over the next generation. Except, lets not pretend like that is us sticking it to the man. We are going to be using a PC that is likely to be using Windows 8 to game. One of Microsoft's biggest problems at the moment is that they have lost a footing in the home computer market to a growing Apple dominance. If the PC did reclaim significant ground in the market, that may well help Microsoft grab back some of their land from Apple. Granted, this isn't exactly the biggest win for Microsoft. I am sure they would very much like to own both markets. Also granted, owning the PC market is less lucrative, at least in terms of gaming. They won't necessarily get cuts of games sold and they wont be able to control how we use their machine and products as much, but regaining ground in the home on Apple is hardly a wooden spoon prize. That is even before we go into the question of if a modern console is really all that profitable, which is certainly a big consideration.