We all saw it; you saw it, i saw it, my neighbour’s ovulating cat saw it; Sony brought the fight to Microsoft’s door step and damn near brought the house down. "no drm" they cried like a drunk piper in old London town, " no *** 24 hour restrictions" they he said with increasing glee, " the status quo you know and love shall remain the same and not change for the better in anyway shape or form but hey at least were not raping it with a a *** made in the cast of an elephant ***". The whole situation can be equated to being brought to an abusive uncle’s house and told you have the choice of being spanked once because you deserve it, or getting intimate with columbine harvester while he sits and tapes the whole thing and submits it to THE CLOWD.
The thrust of that rather weak opening paragraph is that sony has basically won the console war by not royally screwing up. BUT (and this is a big stinky but and one that was overlooked) they were on the fence. They would have done the very same thing had they not seen the catastrophe that followed Microsoft’s ill-fated attempt at pissing of as many people as possible before a class action law suit was issued for abuse and neglect. They deserve all the praise for acknowledging that the Xbox was an awful piece of hardware and then went and made a marketing move that during e3 made even jaded old me jump for joy. They did a good job and are attempting to cash in while the enemy is down and give us some great things while it is there. By simply maintaining the status quo; they came of as heroes. That’s not say they sat on their as the whole time, the share button, 8gb of GDDR5, gaikai and other things definitely help but I think sony will win this generation purely on the good will of the consumer.
Now many of you are probably thinking how I overlooked the fact that xbox did a 180 (no pun intended) and reversed their bs policies and TOOK AWAY FAMILY SHARE because I guess good decisions are in low supply over at their marketing department. I maintain that despite this reversal that the damage has been done. I for one never like xbox,(the pay for xbox live and aggressive marketing of like what 4 exclusives turned me of right at the sight of the thing) but for those who sat by Microsoft and supported it like to name a few (Angry joe, NorthernLion and Jim Sterling) no longer trust Microsoft and as they keep pointing out can always reverse these changes once the money is in the bank.
Now confession time, I live in a upper middle class school district and while I am damn smack in the middle of middle class, many of my schoolmates are wealthy assholes who spend thousands of dollars on shoes, don’t pay you back money, and are grossly out of touch with the fact that their living status is not universal. It is these (well I use the word intelligent life forms VERY LOOSLEY) that say they will buy the xbox one because it is no big deal , and that they have enough money to not have to share and not have to buy use games. So at the end of the day these are the profits microsoft will have. They will get profits from one precenters and their greedy little *** of children while the rest of the audience goes to sony because they understand that not everyone has such luxuries.
At the end of the day though I think I shall stick with steam. It has amazing sales of triple a games (pre-ordered bioshock Infinite and got TF2 hats, XCOM and Bioshock 1). With valve rumouring to introduce a share function I think the best next gen platform is the one we already have. This has been LFLAKS and its been a pleasure.