I was waiting for the "backwards compatability" to come up.
I know that in the world of computing (where I have been working for about 25 years), every time you add backwards compatability, you:
1) Slow/limit the hardware's potential.
2) Make the software more complex and potentially buggy.
3) Have higher costs to get it all to work.
So while somewhat painful, dropping backwards compatibility has many benefits (take the reverse of the above points).
Now, from a consumer point of view, people might say "that sucks" and I won't try to argue that you should or shouldn't feel that way.
But
as someone else put it, it isn't like you are going to make a boatload of cash selling an "outdated" console. Why not just keep the current console AND get the new one (one as in new console, not saying specifically the XBox One LOL).
One thing that MS did is on the XBox One it has a HDMI **INPUT** port that you can directly connect your XBox 360 into and get a hybrid system where you can play your 360 games and One games and still only use the single HDMI connection to your TV from the One. I also heard that you can use the interface from the One to run the 360, so you shouldn't have to swap back and forth. It is kind of like adding an external device to a computer.
One thing about the internet piece. You will still need to connect up any console in order to get patches, enhancements, supplemental game/program data, etc. Nothing is truly “off-grid” anymore it seems.
I am not a fan of the quick connection nightly, but dang, our satellite provider used to make a land-line phone call nightly. Now it does it via the internet every night to get patches, report on-demand purchases, etc. This really isn’t a new idea.
I am also not sure how the internet “cloud” computing would play out (pun intended), but I can’t imagine that MS would require everyone to download content from the “host” Xbox One. They will hit a server and the server will pass down the software. The idea behind cloud computing is to pass just the amount of data that you need in order to provide you with functionality. I would hope that MS’s version of cloud computing would take that into account as well, otherwise it isn’t cloud computing, but more like file sharing. Doing actual cloud level data transfers means that someone playing, say, Forza 5 will get base data and enough bits to race the specific track/course that they are on, and that is it. They get just the cars that are racing and their own, not the full set of cars, tracks, music, etc. That would be substantially less than a full blown download. If they didn’t and they required a large download upfront, then people would rarely ever do that since it will take a lot of people an hour or so just to download data on a decent connection. That is instant death for a console and I don’t think that anyone (even Microsoft) is that stupid.
So with all of that, mainly focused on the Xbox side of things because I own an Xbox and thus that is where my focus has been on my research, I so still have problems with both systems that again, I will let someone else buy at the full retail (or above via eBay) and let things get ironed out in a year before ever even considering getting something different. Then again, I play more on my PC than I do the Xbox or Wii anyway. LOL
