Microsoft "Buy XBOX 360 if you have no Internet"

As I have wrote about yesterday, the new XBOX One will require gamers to check in via the Internet every 24 hours to continue to play video games. And if you have no Internet? Don't want to engage with other gamers over the Internet and play single player games? Have bad connections to the Internet? Tough. According to Micrrsoft, buy the soon to be obsolete XBOX 360 instead.

Really? It seems that Microsoft isn't interested in your choices on how you game. It's telling you how to game. Paul Tassi of Forbes calls their approach "arrogant." And screw the poor. Microsoft is telling you that if you can't afford the Internet then we're not for you. That''s why Sony's Playstation 4 will be the people's machine. It does not require you to connect to the Internet to play video games. Sure, if you don't connect you lose out on DLC, media connections and multiplayer. But you won't be ordered to check in every 24 hours either.

This all reminds me of the Apple Computer ad that had a "1984" theme to it. In it, we see the masses oppressed by a totalitarian state. Then out of nowhere, a healthy athletic, beautiful woman dressed in bright shorts and a Apple jersey, runs down the theater that is showing the dictator broadcasting his message. She hurls a hammer which destroys the screen. The bad guy in that ad was IBM. Now it's Microsoft. And the woman hurling the hammer? Sony.