Christmas Morning

It's early on Christmas morning and naturally, the child is awake before the parents.

It's not the ridiculous excitement of presents, of course. This year I unceremoniously overtook my mom in the income column, which results in Adult Christmas.

It's the kind of Christmas where presents are small in scale - no more big ticket purchases, no more big airplane ticket purchases... really, one tries to minimize the Tickets, Purchases, and Big. The kind of Christmas where the best possible thing is to sleep in gloriously and have some good wine later in the day.

It's also the kind of Christmas where you finally appreciate that having a home, and heat, and a loving family of any size truly are blessings. I experienced life without these things at times in 2013. A lot of musicians I follow on Facebook are saying influential things right now, like reminders to be grateful for those very things, or to call the family and friends rather than texting them.

I'm taking the vacation opportunity to write, since I've had a chance to get some rest.

While there's small presents being exchanged here at Chez Blakey, I bought my own Big Exciting Don't Want to Sleep Present.

It's a Wii U. Shocking, I know.

I created an artificial constraint for myself by plugging things in to the living room TV. While I did an amazing "stealth install" - hiding systems inside a hollow cabinet thought to be for speakers, and fully enjoying wireless controllers - I'm now limited to three HDMI cables with which to plug in all my "next-gen" goodness.

Three console makers equals three systems plugged in, right? Nope - an Apple TV snuck in and took one slot, leaving me with two consoles.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 being there were once no-brainers. But once the Wii U was plugged in, one had to go.

Gamers who know my habits could jump to the conclusion that the PlayStation 3, with its weak UX and de-unified online experience, had to go. But no! The 360 has been retired.

Ever since I got a 360 in 2007, it's been delightful. Halo 3 provided so much fun that it alone was worth the price of admission. I believe that Xbox Live Arcade truly brought us indie games, moreso than anything Steam was doing in 2007. And the Humble Indie Bundle wouldn't even exist for another three years beyond that. Sony and Nintendo also followed in Microsoft's footsteps, followed by Apple in 2008 with the App Store, yielding the entire small/indie/bite-size/$3/$10/$15/$30 world we have today. Back in 2007, I experienced indie nirvana with Lumines for XBLA, and I may hook the 360 back up offline just to enjoy that some more.

The 360 was also the first console to evolve. Remember this?

It's the wee little young Xbox 360 interface. Back when it was just a baby Xbox.

Over the last seven years the system grew up into an awesome adult, one that worshipped at the altar of Good UX, carrying in tow the totems of Netflix and Last.fm to lead us into a streamed living room of The Future.

But like all adults, it went off and did its own thing. In the last two years - when my own unit was unplugged and I was off in Japan, a land not known for its Xbox 360s - it continued evolving in a way that no longer jived with me. The reunion this fall was like some adult reunions where you find you no longer have anything in common with someone you used to know quite well.

Good UX was replaced with account migrations and verification codes and email confirmations. This series of events actually happened, but is in chat transcript form for dramatic re-enactment:

MS: You have to have a secondary email address for security.
me: (choose the one on file)
MS: OK, now you have to have another one.
me: Ugh. (enter in another address)
MS: OK, verify that one with the 4-digit code we sent.
me: UGH. *gets off couch, checks email* *enters 4-digit code*
MS: OK, now click the link we sent to the secondary email.
me: @#$(*@ *clicks link*
MS: OK, so verify this using the primary security email.
me: WHAT THE FUCKING HELL MICROSOFT. *clicks button to have email sent to the *first* email.*
MS: OK, we just emailed your *first* email a security code. Enter that.
me: Jesus Christ, fuck this, I'm buying a PS4. *copy and pastes code*
MS: *cleverly offers a 'I use this address often, don't ask me for more codes' checkbox*
me: is this over yet?
MS: Are you sure you want to add this secondary email?
me: YES FOR FUCK'S SAKE I'M CANCELING MY SURFACE 2 AND XBOX ONE AND GOING ENTIRELY OVER TO APPLE. KNOCK IT OFF.
MS: I'm not going to /tell/ you you're done, but you're now in an options menu and probably done and HAY 2-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION THAT'S COOL RIGHT? WOULD YOU LIKE HELP?
me: *burns a house down*

The online connectivity I once knew as "watch Netflix and download games digitally" was replaced with this strange thing. "Content" may be my least favorite word of the century. I get that people on the business side need an aggregate term for downloadable games, levels, modifications, Avatar material, music, movies, and TV shows, but abstracting all of that goodness into a wholly neutered word when facing consumers is saddening.

Worse still, this Content in the generic form took over the dashboard via advertising. Maybe it wasn't so apparent to users who stuck with the console over the last two years and watched a gradual evolution. But when I left, the dash was some common services and one banner ad. Upon my return, Content invaded with an ADD-inducing overload of videos of game footage, movie trailers, movie ads, music videos, and... where is my game collection again?

We usually refer to the console "life cycle" just as a matter of business, a matter of course, a matter of inventory. But with the 360, there has been a true life cycle: a birth, a youthful prime, a stable maturity, and a senile twilight.

Sadly, death will eventually arrive. We've already ushered in an era where games die and are erased from availability and the collective memory. Nobody misses a failed MMO, but millions will miss World of Warcraft once Blizzard determines it's no longer worth running (I predict it'll be before 2020). Games with omniplayer features may find themselves crippled or unplayable once the servers are killed. Compare that to Mario Kart 64, which I can plug in assuming I still own a Nintendo 64 and a TV with RCA inputs.

As with indie games, Microsoft (with publishers' blessing) will be the vanguard of gaming death. Xbox Live 360 will eventually die, as the original did before it, but could easily take with it your server access, your Content Licenses, and everything else.

All of it makes some family time, a sweater, a pair of socks and a warm dinner sound downright refreshing.