So it seems that indie publishers can't self-publish on Xbox Live Arcade. They have to have publishing from Microsoft Game Studio or a third-party publisher.

I heard this crazy thing at Vintage Stock (it's very much like GameStop). The Xbox One will use the Kinect to see how many people are watching a movie (on say Netflix or Amazon). And if it's past a certain number, then The One will ask for you to pay an extra fee to allow more viewers (that are physically in the same place as you). Now I don't know how true it is. So I am for now calling this a rumor from an employee from an used games store.

i've heard of this rumor to. But i just don't see it happening, particularly if all i have to do to thwart it isput a bag over the sensor.

But then [in theory] The One just tells you that it can't play the video because the camera is blocked......

I think most people still misunderstand the changing gaming market. The 'hardcore' gamer segment is probably less than a third of the existing market, and ignoring PC-fanboys that will never switch to console, the segment growth is pretty much limited to recruiting those who are too young to have yet become loyal to one camp or the other -- 5-10 year olds that Sony is mostly ignoring. There's mothers and grandmothers logging into facebook to play casual games, tons of people hunched over their cell phones and tablets. Maybe those people aren't going to buy a console, but its indicative of a changing market, and if not those people specifically, it says that there are a lot of people out there for which the console has not traditionally appealed to.

The other part of the market is made up of those who game more casually, players of casual games, middle-aged moms and dads, frat-boys who play Madden and an occasional match of CoD. Microsoft is attempting to do what the Wii managed to do through innovative, casual games -- bring new consumers into the market -- through media integration, and to a lesser extent casual/kinect games for the younger audience--and, I'll say it again because I believe it so much, price. Sony's strategy is to appeal to that 30% of the market and hope that the halo effect garners enough attention from the rest of it. Microsoft is trying to appeal to more kinds of people.

I dont get why ppl still want to play on consoles..computers can play games, and do everything else..How can consoles still be on market, whats the appeal? to me is zero..but probably because in Brazil its ridiculous expensive with stupid abusive taxes, both on games and console..

Is it game titles exclusivity? cant be.. that would be a market forced down ppls troat, so what Im not getting?

Exclusives, ease-of-use, longevity, habit. Take your pick.

The PC is a fine gaming platform, but for most people (the non-hardcore gamer) the PC gaming world is confusing because of the variations in the platform. You and I know what kind of video card we ought to buy, processor, how much RAM, if we want to game. We know which video settings to tweak if a particular game is running more slowly than we would like. We know how to install and uninstall our software, add storage to our machines when we run out of room, and lots of other technical things that are simple for us.

But you and I are not most people. If you spend any amount of time window shopping for PC games or graphics cards, you see tons of people wonder out loud "Will this game run on my computer?", "How good of a graphics card to I really need?", "Are they really that expensive?". "Do I get PCIe, or AGP? Is my PC PCIe 3.0? I don't know." Everything about PC gaming is confusing for 70% of the population.

When someone buys a console, they know that for the next 5-10 years all they have to do is pick the right color game box, and pop the disc in the machine. They always get the same, simple experience, no upgrades necessary, no confusion, no additional expense.

There's plenty of other good reasons too -- the living room experience of console gaming is much different than sitting at a desk. The experience can be easily shared with friends and your kids. Its generally cheaper to start -- sure you might be able to build a cheap PC that has equal or even greater specs than a console, but the OS, drivers, and other abstractions end up being such that you need a 50% advantage in resources (or more), just to match what the console is able to do by not having any of that overhead.

There are advantages to both sides, but there are fewer downsides on the console for the average user. The only real downside to the console are that, past year 2 or 3, you're falling behind the performance curve of a reasonable gaming PC, and that you're stuck with it for 3-4 more years. If you're the kind of guy that values being on the bleeding edge of performance, you're a PC gamer, but you've got to pay to keep up, so it has to be really worthwhile to you. I don't think most people are like that, at least not in the US anyways.

I imagine, however, in Brazil its a very different situation where, because of the cost of consoles and games, there are only PC gamers for the most part, and as a result all gamers are necessarily technically adept.

On the other hand, we could have a scene where shoppers go out and here's what happens: the parents won't be sure if they really want this integrated device thing, while the hardcore gamer kid will almost certainly be against it. Who does that really leave? The casual gamer? Microsoft would really have to advertise their console, way more than Nintendo does.

No one has established that the hardcore gamer would in fact choose a PS4 over the Xbox One. It has already been established that there will likely be no graphical difference between the majority of games on these consoles, and even the exclusive titles the difference would be almost unnoticeable while playing. On the other hand, the Xbox has a much better controller, a significantly better infrastructure for multiplayer games, and a friend network that millions of people are already leveraging. I'd be interested in seeing just how much the PS4 "30% faster" GPU really matters.

I'm not talking about what has been established or not. It is hypothetical of course. Moreover, I'm not talking about just graphics here. I'm saying that the PS4 is offering more game related features than the Xbox One. Things like game streaming, live game footage streaming, social features, etc.

Moreover, the question of the capability of the Xbox One to play games is not in question here, we all know that it can play games that are graphically at par (probably at par) with that of the PS4. The catch is that the Xbox One is not offering much that is new as a gaming console (other than a hardware upgrade), which is what Microsoft is still calling it, no matter what we might like to call it. So we still need to judge it as a gaming console.

Also, the question is that does the average person want to shell out the cash for this sort of thing. Is there a good reason for someone to want to buy something like this? If that reason exists, can Microsoft convince people its a good reason?