The consolation prize? Nah, you can keep it.

If you’ve been living under a rock these last two weeks, there was a lot of hype, building up to the reveal of Microsoft’s latest console – the last real contender in the latest saga of the console wars. As with anything that has ever had that much anticipation built up for it, you could hear the joy leaving everyone’s souls, making the noise like a rudely deflating balloon animal. It turns out that most people’s worst fears had become manifest.

There were rumours abound, regarding the name of the new console, and it looks like the community came up with a better name and branding (Xbox Infinity) for the console, than whatever name Microsoft eventually picked out of a hat. So, we’ve now got the WiiU, PS4 and now the Xbox One (now forever known to the Felix games team as the XBone), so yeah. Really inventive names, people. You’ve pushed the boundaries of thought, by incrementing your console name by one, adding a letter and wilfully confusing people with your first console, respectively. What happened to the time when we had names such as ‘Dreamcast’ and ‘Gamecube’? Heck, I’d even accept mixing random words and letters to get new names, like the ‘AssPlayer 128’ or ‘Screaming Eagle X‘, as that would at least be a less-half-assed attempt. Wow, didn’t think I’d moan about the names for that long. So yeah, onto the real disappointment.

Apparently, everyone in the world watches TV, or they’ll die – a school of thought founded by TV Licensing, and now adopted by Microsoft. Now, that’s not to say that Netflix, etc aren’t popular, but trying to advertise your console because you can watch TV on it is... well... that’s just stupid. That’s what a TV is for.

Unusable gimmicks aside, Kinect is required for the console to even boot, so in other word... oh right, unusable gimmick. Well, I started so I might as well let myself finish. Kinect will always be on, and watching your room – your supposed to use Kinect commands to turn on your XBone. So, in other words, Microsoft will now have a way to watch and record everything that’s going on in your room. Germany and Australia, the stalwarts of sensible-thinking, are debating banning the console in their countries, due to the ma-hu-ssive privacy concern.

Much hilarity could be had with other people’s XBones, if the announcement ceremony was anything to judge the Kinect by. Internet denizens reported that their Kinect-equipped Xbox 360s turned off whenever the people at the event gave commands to their on-stage XBone. Be ready for people using in-game chat to direct your XBone to lemonparty or goatse (Google at your own risk). Also, using your Xbox to watch the reveal of it’s successor is just cruel.

DRM is back for another round, where now Microsoft has you bent over a barrel, and you’re still begging for more. No backwards compatibility with previous games, and games are tied to your Xbox Live account (like WiiU games, but we’re bashing Microsoft today). Microsoft has mentioned creating a monopoly on the used-game market, where you can give up your license of ‘Game A’, to get a discount on ‘Game B’ – the sequel to Game A, with nothing changed apart from a new weapon, which we’ll nerf on release’. So yeah, good luck with that Microsoft. We’ll be watching. And silently judging.