Cross Platform Online is Good for Consumers, Bad for Platforms AKA Why I Own an XBOX360

Microsoft wants to do cross platform online with Sony, and that's a bad idea for them.

Hey there everyone, Happy Gamer hear and I heard that Microsoft is going to do cross platform online with the XBOX ONE and Windows 10 (not Steam, Windows 10 store), and they are trying to get Sony to do cross platform online with them, so if you have a PS4 and your friend has an XBOX ONE, both of you can play online so long as the game is on both consoles. This is something that online gamers have been dreaming about since online gaming became mainstream. However, this is a REALLY bad idea for Sony and Microsoft, and here's why.

First, lets go back to 2008; the XBOX 360 and PS3 were the current gen consoles. My brother and I were looking to get one of them (the Wii was off the table for reasons explained in numerous different posts). Since we were coming of the PS2, I said "hey let's get a PS3 because we liked the PS2 so much." He said "no let's get an XBOX 360 because that's what all my friends have and I want to play online with them," and while every online game he wanted was also available on PS3, he couldn't play with his friends on the PS3. Online didn't really matter to me since I prefer single player games, and since all I really cared about were multi-plats, we got an XBOX 360. Sure, I wanted the blu-ray and rumored Sly 4, but pretty much every game I wanted on the PS3 I could get on the 360. However, I didn't play it much because the 7th gen didn't do much for me since most games were shooters or sports (2 genres I don't care for). And even though I wanted to use the streaming services like Hulu Plus and Crackle, I couldn't because I needed Xbox Live Gold to do that, and by the time I got into streaming services neither my brother nor I wanted to pay for gold anymore.

Well in 2011 Wreck it Ralph came out and I said "I refuse to get this movie on DVD, I am getting a blu-ray player of some kind so I can watch this movie right." Since there was a killer deal on a black friday PS3, we bought a PS3. From then on, the PS3 was our primary gaming machine. Every multi-plat from then on we bought was for the PS3. We bought multiple exclusives like Last of Us and Sly 4. Once we bought the PS3, it became our primary gaming device with our XBOX 360 collecting dust. We bought maybe 3 XBOX360 games since buying the PS3, and those were exclusives I got for cheap at garage sales. Even after Microsoft dropped the whole "you need XBL Gold for streaming services" we prefer to use the PS3 for streaming. If it wasn't for platform locked online, we probably wouldn't have an XBOX 360. (Well, we wouldn't have an XBOX 360 as our 7th gen console. I'm a collector, I would have bought an XBOX 360 eventually because I want every console, but it wouldn't have been before I got a PS3).

And there you have it. My family wouldn't have bought an XBOX 360 if my brother could have played with his XBOX 360 friends from a PS3. It would have been great for us, but it would have cost Microsoft a sale. If I were an online gamer, I would be really happy about this because it is great for consumers. However, we honestly wouldn't have bought an XBOX 360 as our primary platform and bought all our games and live gold if cross platform online was an option in the 7th gen. Well, this has been Happy Gamer, signing off, and if I were Sony I wouldn't agree to cross platform online.

Physical Games Will Never Die for Me

So I watched ReviewTechUSA's video on "physical media is dying" and this is the comment I left.



I still buy physical and I will as long as I can, because I love seeing the game on my wall. I don't care "how easy to use" and "installs" and all that, I like looking over at my DVD rack and seeing my Wii U, PS3, and XBOX 360 games along my wall. I love looking at my (3)DS game cases lined up on my (3)DS game shelf. I love flipping through my 3DS game case to get to my game. I play mostly single player games so 15 years from now my games will still be mostly functional.

Now for my "burned" story with digital, a story I plan on turning into skit video. I have a bunch of demos on my PS3 and 360 that I downloaded when I didn't really have money back in high school. When I finally got a job to buy games, I tried getting the full games from PSN and XBL. Oh, those games are no longer on the servers, and this was before PS4 and XBOX ONE. Then around the same time, I wanted to buy some launch DS games that I didn't have (Feel the Magic and Sprung to be specific). What did I do? I went on amazon and bought used copies. Now lets look at a more recent example. PT? Yeah, that digital Konami game that was only available for like 9 months and now it's impossible to get if you don't already have it. Now if only it was released physically. Even if there's game breaking bugs and the patches are no longer available, well it's still playable up to a point.

I will ALWAYS prefer physical.

Here's Why the Wii is so "Underrated"

So I saw this post on 9gag and I felt compelled explain why. This is the comment I left.

Lets see; not HD, no REAL 3rd party support, more than half of the games are shovelware, the motion controls ruin most games, no standard gamepad option (VC and gamecube controllers were exceptions, not norms), stupid name, it's hardware and architecture was almost identical to the PS2 (a console from the previous generation), it's the reason Microsoft pushed the kinect so much, Nintendo didn't care about "the gamer" at all with how they marketed it, online was terrible, the only decent games on it were nintendo first party and guitar hero (and that's being generous), Netflix was like the ONLY media app available, no DVD or Blu-Ray playback (my PS3 is my primary movie watching device), the controls were unresponsive and laggy in many situations, and was the most OVERRATED console of the generation. And that is why "the Wii is so 'underrated.'"