Post Announcement Blues
I have a confession.
I really liked the XBOX One announcement.
Not because the announcement was particularly good, or because I’m excited for the XBOX One, but because the announcement gave me a boost of energy. For a couple of days the internet and I all, generally, agreed that the XBOX One was awful. We were united in our dismissal of its systems and its lack of anything interesting, and our outrage at basically being told that we weren’t the audience Microsoft cared about anymore.
And, really, fuck Kinect.
But as with all things on the internet, the fervor is already dying down. People are talking about it less on social media. More people seem to be moving to resigned disappointment that outrage at Microsoft. Who can blame them? When five year old girls are accidentally murdered by a suicide jumper, it’s hard to get mad about serial codes for XBOX One games, isn’t it?
So, you’ll forgive me if I’m a little sad. The fire is going out. We’re resigning ourselves to another long trudge through yet another console war. Getting used to the butt-fucking that is the modern console.
Maybe Microsoft was right to do this now. Get it out there and done with before they get to E3, get people used to the idea of the XBOX One being a system primarily aimed at America. (Lord knows if or when Europe, much less the rest of the world, will get their cable provides to work with Microsoft.)
Then, when they have a lackluster showing at E3, we can all go “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as the XBOX One reveal. At least this time they actually showed us some games.”
Keep the bar low, and we’ll be excited by the most trivial of things.
