Most employees aren't on commission to sell video games consoles. Your rationale is them omitting information to make the sale for the more expensive console.

How is that winning if you have to not tell someone something in order to make a sale?

You asked if the being connected once a day thing will hinder regular consumers and I think that along with the price point will be the driving factor for Joe Blow, yes. The whole sharing games thing? Nobody's going to care if you can just hand the disc off to somebody.

Sony is following the standard formula, and Microsoft is the one trying something new. It's a huge gamble to see how people as a whole will respond when the systems launch. But you can bet that people don't care much for change.

Honest question, how many people here actually lend games to a friend? Or borrow? I live in the same apt complex as 3 gaming friends, 2 of which are gamestop employees and have a lot of games. I think I borrowed a CoD game once and they have never borrowed anything from me (in over 4 years). I think the borrowing of games largely went away with the whole PSN/XBOX live setup but I'd be interested to see some stats on it.

100% correct. That may sway uninformed holiday shoppers to the PS4 based on cost alone. I know that even hurt me a bit.

Do you think that right now, when they are trying to sell an Xbox 360, they say: "Oh but if you want to play online you have to pay $60 a year, and with the PS3 that's free"?

The consoles have been priced almost similarly for a long time, and Xbox Live has been an added cost, $60, all that time. You can check the sales numbers.

If it's a store that takes trade-ins? Absolutely.

It's all about keeping it simple. PS4 is like every other console and that's what consumers know. I can't imagine a retail employee trying to explain the 24 hour check-in, not renting/borrowing games, limited options on trading in games.

Has MS said anything about if trade-ins have any cash value that you can cash out on or are all trade-in towards more gaming stuff?

I'm keeping my XO pre-order for now, but also seriously considering the PS4 now that we know the price is only $399. I own a 360, Wii, and PS3, and I barely touch the latter two... so I'll sell those, along with the games, and put that toward the XO and PS4. Sorry, Wii U is not even being considered.

Even if MS makes some sort of change (or "clarification" which conveniently benefits customers in some way), the wheels are in motion; in gamers' eyes, Sony won, and that's all that matters until November. This generation will go to Sony, unless there's some sort of big negative reveal yet to happen. Any "bad news" Sony may or may not have had for gamers is going to be kept tight until as close as possible to the release date now.

I have a feeling that the bigger devs convinced MS to adopt their DRM plan, thinking that Sony was going to agree to follow suit. If that's the case, Sony called their bluff, and they're going to be on top because of it. Good for them.

Why would a Gamestop employee borrow a game from you when they have a free rental service?

I lend more than I borrow since I buy more, but it does happen frequent enough.

The tweets to Larry Hryb are worth checking out

https://twitter.com/search/realtime?...elson&src=typd

I preordered an XBOX One before going to work tonight and a PS4 upon getting home from work. I didn't even see the Sony conference and I am super excited about the system. Since MS says they are still in talks about what they are doing about rentals I will give them a bit of time to sort their shit out. I don't expect them to change their stance on things but I hope today was a wake up call for them. They built up a great library and strong fanbase with this generation and shit all over it with the XBOX One. My PS3 always took a backseat to my 360 but as a gamer I can't ignore the vast differences between the upcoming systems. The winds of change caught me by surprise today but I'm flexible and I'm going with it.

Good times. gotta break his heart reading all that.

my favorite:

@majornelson you’re fucked

This is just cruel:

Agreed, and I'm a guy that is still bitter at Sony for killing the Dreamcast.

Unless Microsoft thinks twice and fixes things, I'm staying away from the new Xbox, at least for a long time.

My friends and I do.

If MS removes the DRM, kinect, and check in requirements, and there are a ton of awesome exclusives for it, I'll consider it when there's a price drop and possibly a console redesign. But MS pissed away a lot of goodwill with all this bullshit, and it will never be my dominant console.

As for other devices that phone home, if AT&T has an outage and your iPhone can't connect to their network, you can still use all the apps on your phone that don't require a data connection. But with the Xbone, if your connection is down for more than a day for any reason, you've got a $500 brick on your hands.

Oh, and my friends and I lend games, swap games, and bring games to each other's houses all the time.

Wow, I'm actually surprised by all the ship-jumping around here, I figured I'd be one of the few. I wasn't really looking forward to a PS4, but with Kingdom Hearts 3, I'm locked in. $100 cheaper and none of the bullshit of the X1 is just icing on the cake. A little mad at myself for not having build a free game library via PS+ by now, but I digress. It's not like I can take them with me anyway.

https://twitter.com/JustinMcElroy/st...38454055886848

I took a lot of heat earlier in this thread for staunchly defending what MS had been saying, mainly because I'd assumed Sony would be doing the exact same thing.

I'm shocked. Completely.

I don't think I'll cancel my XO preorder, but my whole perspective has changed. The PS4 will be my primary gaming machine, and the XO will be exclusives only.

I just, wow. I don't know how MS survives this.

I don't think anyone expected Sony to display so much common sense. When do corporations ever listen to what people want, and then give it to them to the letter?

At most stores they are not commission sales people so they honestly do not care if you buy anything at all which seems pretty obvious by the customer service you get at most stores.

Even in the case of the commissioned salesperson they just save you money on a "better" console then have you spend that money on cables(huge markup and commissions) and games that they make commissions off.

I would love to know the behind-the-scenes here. Did the backlash get them to change course?

Or were they laying low? Letting the conventional wisdom sucker Microsoft to rush headlong into the fray. Expecting Sony to send reinforcements. Then the "reinforcements" hit them from behind.

True. Although, there could very well be "paid incentives" on either side, and I imagine there will be a lot of those going on for this new console generation.

I expect, in the coming days, MS is going to attempt damage control by releasing a "side by side" comparison of exclusives, features, etc.
It'll fail. But they'll try. On the top of the list will be:
- XBox Live Gold applies to all household members, not a single account.
- XBox One games can be instantly shared with up to 10 family/friends (yes, I think they'll add "friends" to that statement), without risk of scratching or breaking the disc, because they don't need it.

Those are the two "wins" that MS can try to use to their advantage. Other than that... it's going to be a really rough ride for them.

I would bet good money that the system was going to be $500, and they dropped it down at the last minute to undercut Microsoft.

As far as DRM goes, I have no doubt that Sony was in talks with publishers about it. But clearly those talks didn't go far enough that Sony committed to installing system level DRM checks.

What's funny is that just a few days ago people were accusing Sony and MS of collusion.

Killer Instinct is a day one free to play title:
Welcome to the new age!