I understand where you are coming from and the YLOD on your PS3 really, really sucks. My original 40GB PS3 stopped reading discs a week before Metal Gear Solid 4 was released. Sony was good as gold and within 10 business days, I had the unit back in tip-top shape. While PS3 did have issues, it was less than 5% of units that were affected with the YLOD. The Xbox 360 on the other hand at one point had over a 50% failure rate with over 85% of the original units failing to the RROD.
I've felt that Microsoft has screwed us as gamers since they shitcanned the original Xbox (a really, really good system) prematurely to focus on the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 which they knowingly released in a faulty state because they were in such a rush to beat Sony to market. I personally had my original Xbox 360 fail, so as for last generation at that point, Sony and Microsoft were equally crapping out for me personally. Microsoft then decided to focus solely on Kinect. Aside from Gears, Forza, Fable and Halo all we got were Kinect games that frankly sucked.
Even then, I was excited for the big Xbox One reveal. Oh, what a reveal. Completely anti-consumer. Don Mattrick basically pissed in our faces when asked what about gamers who don't have a constant internet connection and he stated "We have a system for those gamers. It's called an Xbox 360." Not to mention forcing the Kinect 2.0 down our collective throats and swearing that the 'bone wouldn't function without it. Lie after lie after lie.
Now, Microsoft didn't reverse their piss-poor policies because they are good guys. They only did it because of the massive consumer backlash. Three generations of consoles, three generations of trying to screw gamers over. As for PS2 "backward compatibility" Sony said all along that the PS4 would not be backwards compatible. One can look at offering PS2 games for download or streaming on the PS4 as milking gamers for games they already bought. Another way to look at it is that people who never had the chance to play these games are now afforded the opportunity to do so. If you already own these PS2 games, why not just play them on a PS2? You can get one under $20 just about any used games store.
I'm not trying to poo-poo your likes or dislikes and your points are completely valid from your standpoint. I fully respect that. I'm just personally not going to get bent over by Microsoft again. Aside from Rare Replay, I can't think of another single game I really want to play that I can't get on another console or the PC. I bought Rare Replay for $10 on Black Friday and I play the bulk of Rare's games through an emulator. So again, not missing much.
To me, Microsoft's big contributions to gaming have been paid online, DLC and releasing crappy hardware. With the way things are going, I see the Xbox One being the last system from Microsoft. They will no longer release sales figures and the PS4 is currently considered to be selling approximately 3:1 with over twice as many systems in users hands. Microsoft is focusing on "Xbox Live engagement" or some such made-up nonsense. Their big "Ace" Halo 5 failed to set the sales charts on fire and it's pretty clear that the post-Bungie years aren't so good. Halo 4 pretty much showed me that the series is soulless without Bungie at the helm. They have a few paid exclusives coming out, but other than that it's the same old Forza, Fable, Halo, Gears grindathon.
As a gamer, playing since the Atari/Coleco days and having been a heavy gamer since the NES brought gaming back to prominence, I have owned and gamed on just about every major system from Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft's attitude is to milk every dime they can out of people. They don't make games that gamers will like, they try to make games they feel like making and tell us that we like them. They throw their money around for timed exclusives like the deal with Rise of Tomb Raider and dissolved most of their actual game studios years ago. Not that I think Sony or Nintendo are some happy joy-joy corporations solely focused on making people happy, but they aren't the soulless corrupt jackasses that reside at the top of Microsoft's tower of power.
Yeah...don't see myself every buying another Microsoft console.
This was way too long to keep my thoughts straight.
Every time my 360 died, and I had 4 die, I believe, they were always repaired or replaced for free. My fat white got replaced with a black slim, my black slim replaced with a Halo Reach edition, and my halo reach edition replaced with the Gears of war edition. So I got free games and controllers out of it in the long run, not a bad experience for me personally. Plus the Xbox Rewards program netted me a lot of free money, I was able to buy microsoft points on sale, and buy games on sale. I probably am very biased towards 360 over PS3, but I fell in love with the controller, achievement points pulled me in, and I rather enjoyed the 360 exclusives (Gears, Forza, Fable, etc.) and Fallout/Elder Scrolls running so much better.
PS3 on the other hand, I bought a fat non-BC at some point, I dug being able to use Linux, then they removed that feature and I pretty much stopped using my PS3 for anything other than blu-rays. I replaced my fat one with a slim because my boss at GS gave me a fantastic deal. I bought a BC PS3 for like $20 that needed the blu-ray drive replaced, I replaced it, and then 2 weeks later, it went YLOD. Obviously not in warranty, and the one repair shop I spoke with said $90, so it left a bad flavor in my mouth. My tune my change once I get around to repairing it or paying someone to repair it.
I completely agree on Mattrick. Guy was an exec at EA, negative points right there. Finally left Microsoft and where did he go? Zynga. The man was a plain bad influence. Phil Spencer on the other hand, I think he's doing a lot of good work to undo the mess Mattrick left behind.
I agree that, that mind set could be applied towards PS2 "emulation" on PS4, but when most of these games are easily available at a lower cost, it's still fairly hard to justify, especially as a collector. I'm not the demographic for that feature, so it kind of doesn't matter. I will say, I would much rather play PSX/PS2 games on PS3 over the original console, because of wireless controllers. I have a pair of wireless ps2 controllers, they are pretty good, but I would much rather use my ps3 controllers. Same would apply to PS4 if it was an option. My mindset is, PSX BC was cheap enough that Sony decided to keep it when it axed PS2 BC, and they were already doing PS2 emulation or backwards compatibility through PS2 classics as well, even on non-BC ps3s. But they put a lot of money into GaiKai, they wouldn't squander that. I get it and I take no offense by it, but I would much rather have BC as an option on top of PSNow, reasonable or not.
I get that PSNow is really more for the folks who missed out on PS3 and such, but as someone who missed out on PLAYING PS3 games, but totally bought a bunch, I feel kind of left out. I don't have a working PS3, so I can't play the games, but if I paid Sony for PSNow or rented the ps3 titles for PS4, I can actually play them and my understanding is there is added functionality playing on PS4 (streaming, sharing, etc.). So I'm missing out altogether.
If Xbone reached full BC with 360, which won't happen, and I were in the same situation but with 360 instead of PS3, I'd be able to play those 360 games I missed out on without having to buy them all over again. Especially since physical 360/PS3 titles are fairly cheap, almost certainly cheaper than buying digital copies.
