Xbox One: My Take

I am a gamer. I love games. My first console was the NES back in the 80s. I moved on to the SNES and even the Genesis. Hell, I had a Sega CD AND a 32X add-on briefly. Gameboy? Sega Game Gear? Yup, those too. As the Generations pressed on, I would obtain almost every console available. I had a Playstation AND an N64. I had a Gamecube, a PS2, an Xbox. I EVEN had a Dreamcast! PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Had 'em all. I. Love. Games.

The console wars have always been one of the most silly things our gamer culture has dredged up. Waving flags and banners in the name of a BRAND. A name. Breaking down into tribes and going to war over which the "better" console is. The games getting lost to the way side. Each console having a veritable treasure trove of them. Yet we as gamers were content to ignore that and champion our "team" over the other. It has made me most sad to see this continues state every generation. Each one mirroring those school yard arguments over Sega doing what Nintendon't and so on.

With all this said, what do I think of current matters?

It's funny, to see people going on about console wars and things, being tired of the silly battles, much as I myself used to complain about. Even Penny Arcade is taking this tact. But for once, one of these consoles is doing something abominable to gaming culture. And... no one seems to care.
Oh, I see the arguing. But these are crouched in the realms of personal freedom versus DRM. In Used game sales and always online. I even see the people who normally would be sane and rational people saying to just talk about the games, the games are what is important, the console is irrelevant but the games are what matters.

And that is exactly why I have such a huge problem with the Xbox One. Games.

As it exists now, Xbox One is one of the worst things to happen to gaming in a long while. Not for the other reasons you see popping up, but mainly from the 24-Hour online check-in.

One one side of the fence are people wondering what the problem is. We as a culture are connected nigh 24/7 anyway. We game and talk on message boards. Why would an online check ever be a problem?

On the other side are people pointing out not everyone has a great internet connection. All over the world are gamers who love the culture as much as any of us, who game without a persistent connection. Even places right here in the United States don't even have dial-up.

Both sides are misguided to some extent. Both of them are taking myopic views, unable or unwilling to understand the other. What matters is what THEY are capable of. How this affects ME.

But the Xbox One doesn't just affect us individually as gamers, this is a device that is going to affect the CULTURE of gaming itself. And over anything else, the problem here is that 24-Hour check-in.

As it stands now, games on the Xbox One are being intentionally made with an expiration date. At some point in the future, Microsoft will shut down the Xbox One servers. When that time comes, every game in the Xbox One library with essentially be vaporised. There will be no retro Xbox One gaming. There will be no legacy for this console. This console is designed in such a way that those all important games are now transient, quick consumables. If you do no play them this generation, they will not exist in the future.

One of the best things about being a gamer is our rich cultural history. Dating all the way back to Pong in the 70s. Every console generation we grow a little more, our gaming heritage grows a little richer. Our franchises grow in number and out individual gems expand outward. And as every new generation comes, it build upon the legacy of those that came before. Playstation gamers got the seventh game in a series with Final Fantasy. The six entries before all had different and excellent qualities. Some of the facets of them were picked up and carried forward. Some of them are intrinsic to their home games. All of them,in some manner, contain something of value to fans of the series. But don't think it's just franchises. How many times a day does someone bring up the likes of Duck Tales, Goldeneye 007, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Godhand, Mutant League, Spy Hunter, Burgertime, Demon's Crest, Chakan, and on and on. Some, parts of various series, some stand alones. But all of these are games, all of them have added something to the tapestry of our gaming culture.

But with an Xbox One, all of this hits a dead end. The games released on the Xbox One will no longer be there in the future. They will not be there to learn from, build upon, or simply experience. This will be a generation of games made to die. For better or worse, the Xbox One is designed to expire, an along with it will go the threads it adds to gaming culture.

I've had this issue with MMOs and the like for a while, but that goes along with the nature of the game. These were games not designed to stand the test of time, but to be played with friends and live in that moment. And... there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But when you change the ENTIRE library of a console to the same thing? I can hardly think of a worse thing to happen.

I have long been a proponent of games as art. As much as any movie, or any book. The experiences they deliver add to us as individuals, change us, help us grow and see the world from new angles. They're also damned fun. They have this element that books and movies do not. We are not passive, we are active. They let us LIVE in these worlds. Experience them first hand. And in turn, shape us. These are valuable to our culture. They leave legacies in their wake. The people who were gaming before us have their memories that they share, and sometimes we in turn seek out these older games. We at times find untenable controls and archaic graphics, and other times they changes how we perceive the current crop around us. They add texture, perspective and most importantly, context. In all things, history is important. It helps us understand how we got to this point, and in turn it helps guide us where to go from there. And, if nothing else, it helps us grow as gamers.

This is why the Xbox One is a nightmare to me. There will undoubtedly be great games on the console. But these games will not be left behind to experience again or even for the first time in the future. Franchises will be born and expand on it. Individual gems will crop up to praise and shape the landscape of gaming itself. And then they will be gone. There will never be a day when you grow nostalgic and in an effort to aid your self understanding, you seek out an old Xbox One game. It wont be there. The next generation of gamers will be left with nothing to give them context on their current games. They will not be able to cruise on over to ebay and pick up a classic used Xbox One console. They will not get to experience these games. Some of them will be re-released, but not all of them. Even then, these will be new games. There will no longer be a Halo 5 in 3D. There will only be Halo 5 VR version with photorealistic graphics and updated voice acting. Whatever that game adds, the reasons and context for its existence, will be changed. Now, I'm not saying for the worse, but the original needs to continue to exist too. This is not just Star Wars getting special editions, but imagine if you could ONLY see the special editions? Hell, imagine that the original trilogy was no longer available because it was on a format that locked up after a certain time. You only have the Prequel trilogy. Those are the new ones. Those are the only ones you need right? But even then, there are others. The ones not a huge as a franchise that will be gone as well. With a system like this in place, the Citizen Kane of games could be easily lost to future generations.

Now, there is a reason that I keep comparing this to movies. Because something similar HAS happened before. Nitrate Film Stock.

Nitrate was the format that movies were stored on for keeping in the past. Unfortunately, Nitrate has two unfortunate properties. It decays rather quickly. And it is HIGHLY flamable. Due to movies being stored on this format, there are films that simply do not exist any long. Important films, controversial films, and even minor gems have been lost thanks the people being careless with the format chosen to store them on. But the main difference here is that this was due to ignorance, Microsoft has built a console that does this with INTENT. I want you to imagine what the history of film would look like if someone hadn't come to their senses and started preserving these things. Originally, you saw a film when it was in theaters, then it was simply gone. Stored away in a vault somewhere. You did not have the opportunity to seek out old films, to expand and explore the art from as you choose. You took it now, or you had to make do with a summary of what happened during the movie from some old book of film reviews. And the  lesser known, the less likely to be heard of again outside a small circle. The advent of Home Video changed the landscape. Now you could find just about anything. Movies were preserved in a viewable extent. You could go and find whole catalogues from your favorite starts, directors and writers. And anyone could do this. Generations after the people who made the movies passed, we STILL have those movies to experience on our own and find new in turn.

The Xbox One will not have something like this. It is turning gaming from the art form it has potential of being, and trying to change it into a consumable. You gobble it up and discard the remains. You let it sit too long and it goes bad. You take it now, or not at all. You take it now, and never again. You miss it, it's gone. It is a consumable. No different from that head of lettuce in the fridge. Up until this point, old console would stop working, but you could buy another one. You could even have them repaired. The games continued to exist. They lived on. Some more rare than others, but still they were there. You will not have this with Xbox One.

Another example that comes to mind is the BBC. Doctor Who. Some of you may have heard of this little British series. I know, it's rare and rather cult in the geek sphere, but bear with me here. The show began in 1963 and ran until 1989 when it was canceled. Now, because it was just how things were done, the BBC had a policy of whipping tapes of their old shows and recording over them. As a result, for a long time, the bulk of the early episodes of Doctor Who were lost. It wasn't until Home Video became a thing that they saw potential and started keeping the tapes. But still, that didn't change anything. Lots of the early adventures of the Doctor were gone. Some of them have been found in some condition or another since, but there are currently still 106 episodes of the show missing. That's about 39 hours a material, the history of this character, that no one gets to see. Not old fans, not new fans. No one. The Xbox One will do this with every game exclusive to it. The episodes still exist in the form of audio fans recorded from their screens with still images. This will be the state of the games, several "Let's Play" videos on Youtube or whatever service takes its place. That is all you will have. You will not get to play them again once they turn the servers off, and they will.

So much has been lost to history. Books. Movies. Artwork. Gone. All of them. Don't let this happen to the games too. A gamer is not just a consumer who downs the crop here and now, but someone within a culture of rich and varied experiences at their finger tips. We have a history behind us and a future before us. And it is extremely important that we have access to all of it. That we can seek out and explore it as we will. Otherwise... Gaming will just be... the current generation. Nothing before, nothing after it. Just a contained little pond with no context and a bunch of fish waiting to rot.

This is my biggest problem with the Xbox One. This is the benefit of Used Games and Piracy. A sort of preservation program for these things. How many of us became fans of a game or franchise, not because we got it when it first came out, but because we found a ROM or some such of an old game? A game at a garage sale, a used game store? These games continue to exist well after the companies got their profit from them, and in turn build fans willing to come along when they RENEW these games for new generations. Look how many HD collections and downloads of enhanced retro games we have. These are built from a legacy. People who played it and want to play it again, people who heard about it and want to play it too. But these programs NEVER give us all the games. These programs NEVER give us the game in its original form. But that is just fine, because the old continues to exist. We can download the new Contra wih HD graphics and tighter controls, OR we can go out and buy an old NES cart (Or even Arcade machine) and suffer through our three lives, busting out the Konami code as needed. These type of things will no longer be possible from the Xbox One forward.

And this is what you are unwittingly arguing for when you think this is just another silly console war. For the first time ever, to defend this console is to argue not that games are more important, but that their format is. This is to be the person calling a film preservationist mad for arguing against Nitrate Stock. This console will die one day, it it will take its entire library with it. The good and the bad.

This is why I write this long ramble, to firstly plead with Microsoft to change this. Remove with crazy 24-Hour check in. Give this console and its games the chance to survive well after you've moved on to the Next Xbox. Give the legacy you are making the ability to survive, not arbitrarily giving it all an expiration date.

Secondly, failing that... I'm here to plead with my fellow gamers out there to not support this console. Do not put your money with a device that is designed to BE a waste of your money. Inevitably, someone will hit the servers and take them down for a week, upsetting an entire group of people unable to play ANYTHING. This too has happened before. More so... please, do not support a console that is going to exist and die and then be nothing but a pile of plastic and metal. The games that come and all they add to our culture will be lost. But if you do not support Microsoft in this come later this year, they could still turn it around. Remove this death sentence of their potential library. But they will have no reason to if you support them now. Could they? Sure. Will they? Well... WHY would they if you have no problem with this? So please, for the sake of our gaming culture and future heritage, say no to this thing. Wait. Let Microsoft come around, or just let the Xbox One die before too many games become potential losses.

If you are a fan of Halo or Call of Duty. A Fan of Metal Gear or Splinter Cell. A Fan of Final Fantasy or Elder Scrolls. It simply doesn't matter, if you are a fan of GAMES. ANY games. This is something you must not support. It's not about console wars or used games or trading with friends. Its about ensuring our beloved hobby continues to thrive. And not just let it die on the whims of companies that add to the culture, but do not see their vested interest in keeping the legacy of their product alive, long after fresh sales have ended. Give our culture the ability to survive into coming generations. The Superman 64s and the Ocarina of Times both. Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Atari and all the companies past and future. It doesn't matter if you have 24 hour connections and all the money in the world to buy it on release day. This will harm gaming as a whole. If you have EVER had a game you loved and lost, a game you played to death but no one else did, a game two or three generations behind that you STILL play. If you've ever bought an old game, or yearned for a game you just couldn't play for some reason. If you have children you want to share your love with or plan to. If you love games, consider yourself a gamer, or just enjoy the hobby. Please, don't support Microsoft in this.

But then... what do I know? I'm just a gamer.