As a lover of the Souls games and a recent gaming PC owner, I'm pretty stoked to try this out on my computer.

Of course it's an homage - humanity's entire artistic history is filled with riffing off of preexisting ideas and compositions. Its how we build context through reference - the very language of visual communication. This is either ignorance of history, and art in general - 2chan's excuse - or fake scandal bullshit for…

1. N/A - The more the cloud is essential to the functioning of the device, the more dynamic uses game devs can make of it. Just because Sim City was a mess doesn't mean the idea is flawed. Since we're looking at ever-improving national broadband saturation and speeds, the already dropping number of people excluded…

First Sale doctrine clearly cannot reasonably apply to digital content, though - post-scarcity, infinitely reproducible media content was an impossibility only a couple decades ago, and modern copyright law isn't remotely capable of handling it. Much less streaming, dynamic content.

The answer is: when there are new retail units on the shelves, they can't mark down the digital versions below that price without angering the retailers - GameStop, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc - they are currently dependent on. They sign contracts to move certain numbers of physical units in exchange for in-store…

Really? I'm near 2, and you're lucky if either of them them have a 6 month old sports game, but it's usually some Kinect thing.

Fingers fucking crossed!

That's Microsoft's job to demonstrate those thing, though - whatever amazing stuff this console is capable of, they sure as hell didn't showcase it today.

It looked better, at least. Still a disappointing amount of lag, even in it's most barebones display. The one lengthy demo I saw today still had a lot of detection glitches. If it's not fast or accurate enough to make the gameplay fluid, I don't think it's ready. It's important tech on our slow march to VR, but the…

The design if the unit is about the only thing its got going for - it balances retro classic with sleek modern pretty nicely.

That appears to be the only audience MS is interested in, so I guess they should be.

I was stoked for this, and everything revealed at this event was extremely disappointing. Who is the audience they are aiming this thing at - Price Is Right/NFL/Racing/military fans? The same exurb audience without the high levels of broadband saturation that the device hinges on?

I don't even care about the always-on thing, the no used games thing, or the required Kinect thing - there's a lot of potential positives that could come from all of those, if properly utilized. But selling the system with enhanced sports television watching? A sure-to-fail Halo TV show? More clumsy Kinect content?…

You can loan out the disc you bought, but legally we've long ago separated the ownership of content from the delivery medium. This medium is what you own, the content you don't - media has been licensed ever since 1710's Statute of Anne.

That's the point, obviously.

The idea of 'ownership' is the illusion in the first place - digital content is post-scarcity, and there's no reason for ownership without scarcity.

Sure, there are some, but, according to industry reports, 14% less every year. All I'm saying is that a forward-looking technology company can't really be expected to accommodate a dying industry. You should really prepare yourself for your local game rental places to no longer be around by 2016.

I don't know where you're at, but across the US game rentals - physical and mail order - have been in deep decline since 2006.

Whether it works for me is irrelevant to game rental places closing down for years with no sign of that trend reversing and no indication of game devs, publishers, or console manufacturers not embracing digital distribution.

Gamefly, at least, is $15 for one disc or $20 for two, after their trial membership. I guess the value depends on how many games you play a month - I tend to really focus on one at a time for a couple of months - a $30-$40 rental isn't nearly as good of a deal as a $20-$35 purchase. I can't remember the last time I…