I'll be the first to admit that I didn't buy the rumors at all. In fact, at 10:00 a.m. PST this morning, I was excited about the possibility of something completely different than what the rumor mill had been pumping out for months. Unfortunately, I have to say that at 11:00 a.m. this morning, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that maybe my days as a gamer and collector are reaching an end. It wasn't just the always-on and no used game thing that was particularly troubling, it was the focus on so many things other than gaming that made me think Microsoft is stuck in some alternate reality version of 1999 when convergence in set top boxes seemed to be the next big thing. It's as if because Microsoft's tablets and phones haven't sold, they somehow assume that people don't watch TV and movies on mobile devices at all. It's as if they forgot that Apple can easily do everything they showed Xbox One doing this morning with some simple tweaks to Apple TV and the iPad. More importantly, it's as if they forgot that the reason all of us bought an Xbox and Xbox 360 in the first place was to play great games.

In any event, I will concede that the rumor mongers were correct about just about everything and my only hope is that Nintendo comes out of E3 with some great games and that Sony somehow bucks the trend and doesn't take Microsoft's lead in going down this path. Sadly, I suspect Sony will pursue at least some of the troubling practices that Microsoft is now bent on pursuing, including tying games to individual user accounts, charging for PSN and requiring at least occasional Internet connectivity. I hope I'm wrong about Sony, but I don't see how they can convince big publishers to support their console without such things in place in this new consumer unfriendly environment.