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Comment by rurounijones | Hacker News Reader

> "Most people aren’t Richard Branson and most people have enough of a connection, however intermittent, to authenticate once a day."

Military Personnel nonwithstanding...

> "Who knows, maybe Microsoft will change the policy again and have people opt in to the online check so that they can share their libraries with their friends. Maybe they will have another tier where people opt in to these benefits. I hope so."

And that was the crux of the matter. WE WERE NOT GIVEN A CHOICE, I am all in favour of letting people choose which is more important to them but MS initially shafted a load of people with their "This is how it is going to be" without any options spiel.

[EDIT] I suppose I should put as a disclaimer that I have never owned any of the x-boxes nor plan to. I am merely commenting from the point of view of a consumer in general.

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> WE WERE NOT GIVEN A CHOICE

As consumers, we are rarely given a choice.

Well, we're always given a choice in the end: buy it or don't buy it.

It's what I've done in the past, and it's what I'll do now. I'll just not buy it. Because if you complain, but buy it anyway, you're really saying that it's still worth while to you.

Sure, but then you were also given a choice with the Xbox One all along.

It sounded like you were saying that people should get a choice between the old system and new. But that's silly, and never happens in the real world anyway.

That is really not the case. Even on the Xbox 360 today, you can either buy a disc or download a game from the marketplace. Physical and digital distribution models have coexisted since the '90s.

I can conceivably see the case where someone'd just like to argue "this, very much yes, but not this" - the whole idea that one thing should just then be a "deal-breaker" is more a reflection of the fact that the only substantial way we can then make the argument is through a binary buy-or-don't-buy.

So I don't mind the rhetoric - someone shouldn't have to claim ultimate and eternal loyalty to a product (lest they risk being attacked with a perceived inconsistency pointed out) to argue with and about a product. Of course it makes it no more effective - but it's slightly more truthful.

Well, we're always given a choice in the end: buy it or don't buy it.

That works with grocery, baked goods, music, perhaps even computers (if you opt not to look at the CPU inside), but game consoles? You can hardly say "fuck Sony, I'm going to buy Final Fantasy for Wii". This only works on a free market, which is a rare sight these days.

You still have a choice! "Can play Game X" is a feature of the platform just as much as as its hard-drive space or lack of DRM or whatever. Luxuries always have an element of consumer choice involved.

It's only, in fact when you start talking about essentials such as food, housing and basic services where you can claim you're forced to buy something. And I'm not even sure where you were trying to go with that music comparison (It's not like I can buy an album but choose to give the money to a different record company).

Why not apply it to the life itself? I mean, people who can't afford food are free to die, aren't they? It's not like anyone is forcing them to live or something. Using this kind of logic, anything can be turned into a choice.

Except choosing to consume a commodity piece of art is very much a choice not a need like food or sleep.

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