That was so unbelievably bad that it made Sega's meltdown seem not so bad. I don't understand why they thought that holding a conference to introduce their newest
gaming console, and not dedicating it to explaining why this would be the
next step in gaming, was a great idea. Because E3 was coming soon? Yeah, you'll be joining Nintendo, Sony, and every third party developer in the cacophony of games being shown off. Brilliant.
And to add insult to injury, who is the target for all of this? Yeah, the tech is neat, voice commands and whatnot. But the audience for cable/dish tv is dwindling, while internet viewing is growing. Sorry but I'm not spending money for cable/dish programming just to spend another fee to watch it through my Xbox. That's retarded. And it's yet another box! All the system does is add a nifty user interface over it! So yes, let's have a conference to announce that your shiny new gaming console is the most advanced television player on the market. Yeah, that gets my wallet happy.
But wait, it gets better! No used games, mandatory online connection, forced game installs, and
Kinect. The system design looks monolithic, somehow straddling that awkward point of minimalism, boring, and creepy. The eye is always watching you. It waits. It knows.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the PS4, but at least they focused on what mattered: video games! The only thing Microsoft managed to accomplish was to reaffirm that they never should have entered into this industry in the first place.
At the very least, Nintendo is probably walking on water right now. This was a better gift than they could have ever hoped for. And if Sony is smart, they're walking back any of the stupid ideas they had (and you know they had them) now that they've seen the backlash against MS.