The big problem problem that new consoles are fighting for is: a reason to exist. Most games demo-ed so far look possible on the current generation of hardware. Crowd sources AI is an interesting twist, but possible on current consoles. Killer Instinct is an odd thing to revive, but it would play just as well on a PS3.

Suddenly Microsoft comes out with a console that:
1. Phones home every day.
2. Bans game lending.
3. Possibly cripples the used game market, or maybe not, nobody is really sure.
4. Requires Kinect to be always on, because that wasn't a disaapointment.

Their sales pitch of "You can play games that are basically last-gen games, but with fewer rights" has had shocking trouble resonating with consumers.

They all have crappy battery life. It may start at 8 hours, but after a year it'll be down to 1 hour.

Most of my friends have viable home laptops with no remaining battery of which to speak. And these were solid industrial models. Does that mean the whole thing should be thrown out and replaced?

Games that require an always-on connection will still require one whether or not they're on Steam. Steam itself has an Offline mode which is a bit of a buggy hassle, but can make subway rides / airplane flights pleasantly less introspective.

SSD's in this laptop cut boot speed in half. This is absolutely apparent, and I'd definitely swear by it as the most effective $200 speed-up I've put into 2 computers.

3.5" and 2.5" drives are very similar once you get to the scale of a TV. And if you need performance, full-sized 3.5" drives go up 10 - 15k RPM. The difference between 7.2k and 5.4k isn't that great. And, of course, 7200 RPM laptop drives are absolutely not quiet, compared to other drives.

My laptop hard drives average 1.5 years between failure. If an SSD drive dies in 5, that's a huge improvement.

Nintendo and Sony at this point seem like they're in a bit of a holding pattern with their consoles... Nice bumps, but nothing genuinely and firmly compelling yet. It sounds like Microsoft is betting the Xbox house on the Kinect 2.0. While that does seem like a quite impressive piece of kit, the big question remains: "Is it high fidelity enough to make up for not having buttons, or will it be as fluffy and transient as Kinect 1.0?" If they can answer Yes to the first question, Microsoft wins. If not, Sony or Nintendo wins.

Of course, for all we know it could go to the Ouya or Apple TV, based on a more open development environment allowing for strange and compelling new games. But of the traditional Big 3, the big question is "Does Kinect 2.0 make a good gaming controller?"

As far as I can tell, Non-Family-Friendly games are basically the Rip-off-the-head blood voyeurism type that appeal to teenagers, and Heavy Rain. And while I pretty much bought a PS3 for Heavy Rain, there hasn't been another good game in the past 5 years that really needed to be "adult." All "adult," games seem to be a 14-year-old's power fantasy.

If I want to access my game library anywhere on the planet, I can just employ external storage. The same goes for any other form of "entertainment". This can last for as long as I like. The only stumbling block is DRM. ...And hardware / software which advances, becoming incompatible with old hardware and software. Also, maintaining proper on-site and off-site backups of said software, ensuring everything has viable access to the media, etc. Oh, and that whole "you don't actually own it they're just selling you a revokeable license" stuff which has only rarely been tried.

There are lots of cages. The Good Old Games cage is nice, in that the existing copyright restrictions mostly don't stop me from demonstrating to students even if the technical limitations of old games can be a PITA. Steam Cage is nice, in that explicitly flows freely from computer to computer and legitimately gets out of your way to do anything legal with it, yet is restrictive enough that publishers put modern games on it. But you can't sample, remix, etc from either of them, and that's the bigger cage anyway.

The Xbox DRM System validates to 1. The purchasing Xbox Live account OR 2. The purchasing Xbox hardware. So if you buy a game, you can play it while logged into your Xbox Live account no matter the hardware, or your Xbox can play it no matter who is logged in. They have a simple and automatic (though slow) system for updating all of your games to consider whatever your current Xbox is, to be your purchasing Xbox.

The PS3 gives the logged in PSN account 5 downloads. You can play nice and download to just your PS3. Or you can be a jerk and download to 4 friend's PS3's as well. Those all work fine.

Apple, of course, allows for any iTunes login to download to any device, and that download will work indefinitely. It will not, however, backup or update if the user doesn't log in under that iTunes account again. I believe Google Play works the same way.

Steam is intrinsically tied to your user login, but as long as you're only logged in to one machine at a time you can use everything you've ever bought.

So yes, there are much better systems out there.

I'd contest. Nintendo is in the business of making "Game Machines." For most of the past 20 years, their "console" business has been second-earner to their portable handheld device business.

Really, what has always sold hardware is compelling new experiences. The Wii offered something new and unique, that was also fun. The Xbox 360 had enough power under the hood to be compelling in a different way. And the PS3 was (and is) the best Blu-Ray player you could buy.

Sadly, the WiiU and PS4 appear to be playing catch-up with Apple & Google, instead of striking out on their own. The big feature of the Wii-U is a touchscreen. While nice, we've already had the DS. The big feature of PS4 appears to be Facebook, and that already exists too. Of the 2 traditional console makers who have tipped their hands, neither seem very compelling. The Kinect 2.0 might be high enough fidelity to provide unique new experiences, or it might be another Kinect-sized dud. We shall see.

On the other hand Apple is selling a lot of tablets, and many of those are secretly gaming machines. A lot of phones are gaming machines. And PC's are on the powerful end of the development curve at the moment, making them compelling living room devices. It's a shame Windows 8 is so terrible, but overall those are just another gaming medium as well.

It's a fun bit of trivia that draws headlines and can be used to talk to kids about the destruction of the sun, death by meteor, and other fun apocalypses. And who knows: maybe Boson Degredation can be detected somehow, like carbon dating.

Science isn't supposed to be useful. That's engineering. Science is supposed to be insightful in unexpected ways, leading to more understanding.

If I'm not mistaken, for historical reasons Apple used to add DRM on the user's side (which was always a bad idea, but whatever), rather than the server side. This would lock them into a model where they needed to run code on the end-user's machine, rather than globally.

Why they *STILL* have a crippled website is anybody's guess. It could be an attempt at platform lock-in. But also, It took nearly 15 years to turn the worst steaming pile Apple ever put out into a 2nd version, so maybe it's just a resource issue.

Bikes seem to be one of the largest broadly tradeable but untracked commodities that hit retail. Scammers are always looking to get bikes... A $1,000 bike can net the scammer 2 or 3 hundred real dollars. It is, in a way, a currency.

Agreed. This is a console transition year. Any investment you make in a new console now will probably be moot by next Christmas. The new Xbox and new PS are on their way. And while very little is known about them, they will probably launch by next Christmas. By the year after that, there will be a clear winner.

If you're OK with the idea of buying an obsolete console, then go for it. The Xbox has an amazing library of games, though at $250 with hard drive (you need the hard drive), it's hardly disposable income. With the exception of Halo, most 360 games come out on the PS3 anyway. $80 for a used Wii isn't terrible, and it has enough of a back-catalog of great titles that your kids could be happy for a year or two with it. But there aren't any new games that will come out for it.

Really, the other big gaming platform you could go for would be the iPad. But that, of course, would be even pricier.