Sad thing is that a majority of gamers worldwide are, for lack of a better term, lemmings that follow the crowd to the next media-fueled hype machine at the time. If the media pumps this up as some life-changing thing for consoles going forward, better believe the masses will go out and buy it not fully understanding the death warrant they just signed for the gaming industry.
I have seen this sentiment echoed often, the idea that people are just lemmings that will buy anything. Put simple, I think it's bullshit. It is the type of bullshit that people tell themselves in order to feel superior, which is a flavor of bullshit that I find particularly annoying.
Consumers are, as a group, extremely savvy. Gamers even more so. Good games generally sell very well and bad games are rejected. Videogame reviews predict sales better than film, music or book reviews do. Quality is recognized and rewarded by gamers more often than in any other medium.
It is extremely hard to get shit by consumers these days. Marketing is not some unstoppable force. Apple is a great example of this. In the 80's they had an excellent product and great marketing. They where very successful. Then in the 90's they had bad products and great marketing. They almost went out of business. Then in the 2000's they had great products and great marketing. If marketing was the primary influencer of customer behavior then Apple would have never fallen out of favor. But it turns out that no matter how good the commercials were, people recognized that the Newton sucked.
Customers don't care what a product
is; they care about what it
does. And the narrative about what a Always Online console does is easy to understand.
No, if Always Online is successful it won't be because of the idiot public being bamboozled. It will be because Microsoft was able to offer a product that was actually valuable to people. I would assume they will attempt to do this through a low price + subscription model.
Thinking about it, my guess is that you will have the option to purchase the 720 for $99 with a contract. For the life of the contract it will require internet. If you don't pay it is worthless. If you buy it outright or finish your contract the console would be able to function offline. I bet they present it like a smartphone.
Personally, I don't like that approach. I want things to move away from the subsidy model not towards it because I think it allows too many anti-consumer practices to flourish. I don't often look at industries and think to myself " You know, I these guys would act more like Verizon and AT&T!"