Week 10: Xbox 360 vs. Xbox One

This past weekend, I spent some time in Niagara visiting my sister and baby nephew, and my twin brother. Between bouncing my nephew around and trying to soothe him by singing Aqua's "Doctor Jones" loudly and off-key (it worked), my brother and I went out to EB Games to take a look new releases. While there, I saw the Xbox One was on sale - almost $100 cheaper than I have seen it elsewhere! What a steal, I thought! I have a clunky refurbished Xbox 360 that I use to fail at Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo 3 (I like video games, I swear. I'm just terrible). I don't have a blue-ray player, and I wanted something to play online games with my brother, as well as watch Netflix on my TV.

Because I'm an impulse buyer with little self-control, I ended up leaving EB Games with an Xbox One, two Lara Croft games, Halo 1 through 5, and something called Evolve (my brother handed it to me and said "Buy this"). When we were checking out and my head stopped spinning some, I asked why I had to buy Halo when I already had two Halo games for my Xbox 360. Couldn't I just pop those discs in the new console and play? My brother gave me that side-eye look he gives me when I say something he thinks is silly. "No. It doesn't work like that."

WHAT?!

It turns out, Microsoft created Xbox One with limited backwards compatibility. I recently learned what this meant myself. Backwards compatibility means the ability of a newer model to play games from an older version. He showed me an online list of the games that are currently backward compatible and pointed out that my Call of Duty games and Halo games were not compatible.

Seriously, WHAT?!

Xbox is working to make some games backwards compatiable, adding to their list all the time, but that doesn't mean that everything will become compatible. It makes sense for Microsoft to avoid big ticket games like Halo, Call of Duty, and Fallout - some of their biggest sellers, where they can make more money forcing people to re-buy their games. I hate having to purchase the same thing twice, but that is what companies are essentially forcing their consumers to do when they push out the newer consoles. 

But what does this mean for ownership?

Aren't companies like Microsoft taking away some of my authority as an owner when they stop servicing and protecting older models in favour of pushing the newer console? I'm not trying to crack the game or re-distribute to others. I just want to have the ability to access and play my older games on my newer console. Perhaps this is the future of digital texts such as video games. The newer models will keep being released, overshadowing and pushing the older models into obsolescence, and losing older generations of games. This could become a problem in the future should scholars want to study the developments of a game over time, but they cannot find a console to play it on. Personally, I don't think I should have to purchase the same game multiple times because a newer version of the console is released every few years. 

For now, I'll just hold on to my Xbox 360. It can sit right beside my Xbox One. After all, I need that big clunky machine to play Disney Universe!