Why I cancelled my XBOX ONE pre-order.

I'm not paranoid about the NSA spying on me with the new Kinect sensor. I've never bought a game second-hand and have never felt like selling any part of my collection (it isn't as if you get much for them anyway and I'd likely want a little burst of nostalgia at some future date and be compelled to buy it again). I'm a happy owner of a 360 and adore the pad and don't mind paying for LIVE. I could care less about NetFlix as I have Sky+HD Box Office with WiFi On Demand. So, without really thinking about it I pre-ordered ONE (as I like to call it) as soon as it became available, from Amazon. I had saved up enough money to buy all three next-gen consoles if I wanted to, but the fact that all the games I was interested in were multiplatform meant that it would be silly to get a PS4 as well. The Wii U looked like a better second console to me, as I had enjoyed my N64 in the past, but I'd wait until 2014 to get that (if at all), due to the relative lack of software Nintendo had released for it (I did think a lot of its games were suited to cohabiting groups - i.e. split-screen multiplayer, party games and Mario Kart played by brothers and sisters, which didn't attract me as I have no one near me to play with other than faceless... and if I were wise... voiceless, individuals online.

My 360 had RROD'd three times, but Microsoft took responsibility for their design fault and extended my warranty for to three years. I kept the box and kept sending it back. UPS brought it back with a new motherboard, or I'd get another 360 as a replacement. Eventually, I sold it... never used and bought a Jasper motherboard based 250GB Elite, which is very much quieter and I am 100% happy with. The 360 is well worth buying even now if you have never owned one before.

All the fuss about ONE needing to be always-online, no resale, privacy concerns were irrelevant to me - I planned to get all my games digitally (indeed, the only thing that irked me about the 360 was having to get up to swap discs, when all my iOS games existed in a resume-from-the-point-of-pause "Multimedia Jukebox"), I liked the idea of waking my ONE and immediately starting to pick up any downloaded game where I last left it (without having to wait on a progress bar as it updated the Dashboard, or patched the game I was wanting to launch, with ONE even automatically reconnecting in the middle of the night should my broadband temporarily falter), nice as it would be to Delete and gift a digital download to someone on your Friends list to Download Again from the Marketplace for free I didn't personally need it or the wierd (probably not as good as it seemed) Family Sharing scheme that they were offering to compensate for no resale of the software licence (having cheaper multiplatform games than the competition if you downloaded them would have helped more, in my opinion, redressing the total cost of ownership in their direction a little, but it wasn't to be), and oh... Kinect 2 could have simply be turned to face the wall and still listen out for "XBOX ON".

So why the change of heart? Well, it wasn't Microsoft's abysmal E3 press conference, nor was it Sony's as I had already cancelled my ONE and pre-ordered a PS4 in order to beat the suspected rush before they even announced their "no change" policies to rapturous applause. It wasn't because the PS4 was cheaper - as I didn't know that when I made the switch. It was simply because I didn't want to pay for a peripheral that had not been demonstrated to be of use to me. I don't want to stand up to swap discs, so I definitely don't want to stay standing to play a game. What would have sold it to me would have been someone piloting a Helicopter in Battlefield 4 and looking around the cockpit by having their head movements tracked and amplified (much as they are with the TrackIR 5 headset in those ARMA III videos). It would free me from having to always turn in the direction I was looking. It would make FPS gaming far more natural and improve my situational awareness by allowing me to glance around at my surroundings whilst I covered a quadrant ahead of me. No such potential was demonstrated. No personal trainer, or yoga instructor was demonstrated either. Microsoft failed to communicate why their console needed this 'extra apparently useless thing' and why I would have to pay for it.

Given that all the games I wanted to play were multiplatform I went for Sony's machine. PlanetSide 2 helped swing it.