He isn't pandering. He's letting you know that you are trapped in a corporate box and getting played for your loyalties.
These are all reasonable requests you'd think a console developer could agree to. But they'd rather keep a lock on their fanboys because the walled garden model pays well.

What I don't get about console fanboys: They complain that their favorite console could run things like battlefield 4 better, if only those games weren't supposedly being dumbed down to run on the competition.

It got what it deserved.

Technically this is cheating, because Glados is a superior PC game character that was ported to inferior consoles.

So much for gun control...

Sooo... what about the gameplay?

They can easily say they won't shutdown service or ban anyone, because a shipping mistake hasn't happened yet. I expect its unlikely to be a problem now that a stink has been made. Devs will go live early and shippers will double check their dates.

Well, never needing a remote again would be nice.

They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs and thought they could replace it with a chicken.

I'd pay extra for that...

What you're really saying is that I should play this on a PC.

Why shouldn't you be terrified?
I don't need the government cataloguing the tweets I'm sending, let alone eavesdropping on my facebook conversations and collecting my selfies for god-only-knows what purposes the DHS has in mind. Its my business alone when I'm on foursquare and I don't need Obama cyberstalking my vine…

There are alot of non-professional guns that are made to fire just to say that they are "real guns" and not props.

If console gamers gave a damn about graphics quality, they wouldn't be console gamers.

Without backwards compatibility it's not a true upgrade, so no ones rushing to buy when all their favorite games through winter release are slated to appear on previous-gen machines.
Expect more movement next year (summer ish) when Titan fall, watchdogs, Destiny and other must haves appear on shelves.

There are all kinds of decorated guns that fire, especially from the flintlock era. The guns had thicker than normal barrels (because users back then weren't careful about their powder measures) and the metal removed is hardly enough to weaken it.

As I keep telling people, its all about the games. Which makes me wonder why backwards compatibility wasn't a bigger deal.

Aside from being a human, soldiers are a unit of force no different than a tank or aircraft. Their performance is directly affected by the equipment they carry (and, just like a vehicle, performance harmed if the equipment is heavy or ineffective).

So if it doesn't work when I buy it, can I take it back for a refund?

I don't think that's entirely true tho.
Comparing a fully wired soldier (radar screen, map, voice coms, fire control systems, health monitoring, etc...) to a WWI soldier (fancy hat, shovel) is like comparing a modern fighter to a biplane.
Yes there are things about the minds of great soldiers that don't change, and…