StingingVelvet: What I said is consumers don't care, and what I explained I meant by that is that they choose playing the game they want to play over DRM every day of the week. Microsoft has some other hurdles in front of them right now (bad press, $100 more expensive) so a direct sales comparison won't tell us much, but I stand by my assertion: if people want the game a lot the DRM becomes completely invisible to them. Half Life 2 and Diablo 3 are all the evidence I need... endless negative articles, endless complaining, MASSIVE sales.
You're comparing situations that are completely different. Diablo 3 and HL2 are just games, the Xbox One is a platform. On the PC you have some games that are always-online but the vast majority isn't. The platform itself doesn't restrict you. Look at this forum, there are many people who buy from Steam and there are also many people who avoid Steam. We can choose. On the Xbox One it's different, it's not just a few games that are always-online, it's the fucking platform.
If my internet goes out, i can't play Diablo 3, but i can play Torchlight. If my internet goes out my Xbox One turns into a big black brick. Just a brick. My apps on my cellphone work when i'm out of range (and believe me, this happens a lot here in Brazil, there are many smaller cities still not covered by mobile phones). I would never buy a cellphone that forces me to be online on 3G for my apps to work.
You're comparing single games to a platform. It's not a fair comparison by any means. My guess is that people are willing to risk U$59 on an always-online game, but i'm not sure if they'll risk buying a U$499 platform and U$59 games on something as restrictive. And who knows how long the servers will last? Will my new shiny console turn into a fucking brick after 10 years? My Atari 2600 still works, for fuck's sake. Microsoft has shut down Live for the first Xbox after only 8 years. I'm not so sure people are willing to trust Microsoft.
A similar comparison would be if the new Windows required always-online connection to work.
And even in the case of Diablo 3 i'm not sure if it worked so well for Blizzard. Yes, it sold a lot, but there was also a huge backlash because of the connection issues on launch. I'm not so sure if as many people would buy Diablo 4 on launch day after that fiasco. When DRM works and isn't annoying, most people won't complain. But in the case of Simcity and Diablo 3 it didn't really work as expected. I'm not even sure if EA is happy about Simcity. The backlash because of the connectivity issues was huge, they even had to apologize by giving users a free game. I'm pretty sure this costed them some money.
