Scully Scully Scoo
Member
I don't really value backwards compatibility. It doesn't mean much to me in my purchasing decision. BUT if I were Microsoft (or a Microsoft faithful or whatever) and I wanted people to believe there would be meaningful ecosystem ties beyond, "Well, your GamerTag already has all your FRIENDS you will surely be telling everyone on a message board are all buying Xbox*," they should have found a way to make that stuff carry over. I understand there are technical and logistical challenges. Without it, I think there's not much tying people any platform at all. I think Sony learned this the hardware last gen. Given the popularity of their platform, so many of their software titles went on to become multimillion selling titles. Look at how SOCOM's popularity waned as people found substitutes elsewhere. I think with very, very few exceptions (and Halo could be one of those), "perfect substitutes" in gaming are just substitutes that come close enough.
I see this often and it frustrates me: "But Xbox 1 has better/more games." At what point do we decide that we will let the market decide this? This statement has not been validated by the market thus far. I see lots of arguments (and have to moderate lots of them...) regarding the PS+ indie games, the diversity of lineups, the quality of exclusives, and so on, but it just seems like a lot of bloviating to me.
For lots of people, $500 is a not immaterial proportion of their annual income. If you make $40k or you are a teenager or whatever, $500 is more than 1% of your GROSS annual income. You think people should make that decision because of Killer Instinct?
the lack of backward capability actually made my decision to jump from 360 to sony even easier. it would have been an added incentive to stick to xbox and lord knows they need to offer every incentive they can