8th Gen Disappointment

My Xbox One arrived in the mail today. Obviously, I was very excited about it. I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember and I was happy to make the jump into the next generation.

I’m already considering selling it.

Mostly, I’m vastly disappointed in the fact that it is mandatory to install every game to your hard drive, even if you own the disc. There is no way to play the game directly from the disc. I thought this nonsense was reversed when Microsoft did a 180 on all of their ridiculous Xbox One policies!

Each game is about 50-60gb, and there is often a 6-9gb title update you have to download before playing. Looking forward, there will be no way for me to have all of my games available to me at once. On my Xbox 360, I’ve amassed roughly 45 retail games and roughly 45 Xbox Live Arcade games. All of my digital games and DLC fit comfortably on my Xbox 360’s 120gb hard drive. Let’s say, 10 years from now, I have roughly 45 retail and 45 digital games. How large of a hard drive would I need just to have convenient access to my games?

It takes forever to install/download these games, too. I downloaded an Xbox 360 launch title to try out the backwards compatibility. Downloading that 6gb game took over an hour, so I dug out my Super Nintendo from storage and played that while I waited. I want to be able to play my games when I want to, not an hour or two after that.

The Xbox One could serve me well for a little while, but I don’t want something that can only serve me for a little while. I want something that can serve me well decades later like my Super Nintendo still does.

I’m also disappointed in the slim pickings of available apps. The only music streaming service is something called Groove Music. No dice for Spotify or Amazon Prime Music or Apple Music or anything. (Pandora’s there, but that’s a different beast.) You’d think the self-proclaimed All-In-One entertainment device would allow you some damn options.

At any rate, I really don’t like the direction gaming is going (and has been going for quite some time now). I just want to buy the game, put the game in the machine, and play it. I don’t even like buying new games now because I want all of the content to be on the disc so I don’t have to worry about some network-based download 20-30 years from now. Even Nintendo is going the DLC route now. Maybe I should focus on retro gaming from now on — catch up on games I’ve missed in previous generations.

I’m considering a PS4. If that console also requires mandatory installations, then maybe I’ll build a gaming PC. I always preferred having the physical games, but apparently that’s not how consoles work anymore. In that consideration, I can buy a game on Steam for a lot less money than I can for the Xbox and then I can play that Steam game on a PC 10 years from now, whereas an Xbox One game probably will not be playable on the next Xbox. I always preferred playing with a controller rather than a keyboard and mouse, but almost all modern PC games have controller compatibility now.