It's been a week since E3 and the major reveals by both Sony and Microsoft and, initially it seemed like Sony had pulled the rug out from under Microsoft.

Microsoft's stance of 24 hour online checks, a digital library and the inability to easily share your games outside of your immediate 'family' caused uproar across the Internet despite a few high profile individuals such as Total Biscuit and Cliffy B attempting to explain how it was a good thing.

Personally, I was quite taken with the idea of being able to share my digital library with ten members of my 'family', regardless of their location.  The idea that I could easily allow my brother, who lives about 120 miles away, have quick and easy access to my games collection seemed like a dream come true.  As quite an avid PC gamer, I'm already used to the idea of using a digital library, like Steam, and lacking the ability to sell my games on has never hindered me... if anything, I would guess that I've probably saved more in Steam sales than I would have made selling most of the games I own (especially given how little most places pay for used games).  I realise, however, that I am in the privileged position of having a decent internet connection so I can appreciate that the regular online checks would cause some upset for those that don't.

Microsoft have, however, now done a comple U-turn on these policies, most likely as a result of Sony's pretty blatant assault at E3, and the new console will function very much like the old one.  You'll require a disk to play; you can share/sell that disk with anyone and the console won't need an internet connection after the initial activation/update.

Sadly this does mean that we lose out on the new features and, potentially, the widespread use of the cloud computing Microsoft promised as developers won't be able to guarantee that the console is connected.

It would have been nice to have the online requirement, and therefore the digital game library, something you could opt in to.  Perhaps give you the option when you insert a game disk for the first time to tie it to your account.  Unfortunately, I realise that there would be no way to ensure that you didn't then lend your disk to one of your offline-only friends so they could play it but surely that risk is minimal? In today's connected world, most people probably are going to be connecting their console at some point to download updates, or DLC so the minority of players that have an offline console and an online friend willing to lend them a disk is unlikely to give the developers too much lost sleep?

Obviously places like Game and GameSpot have celebrated Microsoft's move, suggesting that it's the right thing to do... but that's not surprising given the hideous profits they make on used games (sometimes at the expense of a new game sale that might have helped the developer).

The really good news, however, is that there is now some proper competition again.  Despite the Xbox being about £80 more, you do get Kinect 2.0 although it would have been nice to see a Kinect-free version... but I understand their reasons for including it.  Now developers know that you'll have Kinect attached to your Xbox and will be more inclined to include features that take of advantage of it (that's a good thing, right?).

The best news over all, however, is that while the arguements over which console is best will continue to rage on, we can now just focus on the games and everyone wins!

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Welcome to Chaotic Good where we do our best to give you balanced and honest reviews, news and opinions of video, tabletop and RPG games, old and new.

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~ Naiboss