Microsoft would lose more money than they would gain from acquiring the publisher. Activision makes as much as they do off their games because they are multi-platform. And although the 360 versions of the CoD franchise seem to sell a good amount more than PS3 and Wii, there is a possibility that the profits Microsoft sees could be as little as 1/3 of what Activision currently makes. Buying these IPs is not going to convert a significant amount of people to Xbox gamers. Therefore the cost Microsoft would pay would not see a profitable return and the IPs are likely to lose significance as single-console titles.

Microsoft also has a hard time being a publisher. They've shut down nearly all of their in-house developers and the once-great RARE has been demoted to a Kinect grindhouse. It's difficult to imagine any good coming from Microsoft being the publisher of Activision titles. Not that Activision is very good at being a publisher either, but they have a better chance at making money than Microsoft.

The biggest challenge is getting games on the system that go beyond what Android games already do. I can see the console having a mild success without some major software releases and exclusives, but to really make it big it needs more support from the big players on the traditional consoles. I am interested, but I haven't been sold. They need something more.

@c0kemusheen This article might help explain => http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/top-eu-court-upholds-right-to-resell-downloaded-software/

This is not ACTA. What I'm talking about is preventing companies from selling "products" as "services" in order to get around used product sales. Essentially this new law in Europe gives gamer's the right to resell their digitally downloaded games.

You guys claiming "DRM" need to think a little more broadly about the topic. There is a worry that companies will make streaming the only way to play games in the future. That future is far away from now and it's clear that is not what is happening now.

I would be willing to use streaming for playing game demos. It would be much better than downloading the demo just to toss it out. Plus you get immediate access to the demo instead of waiting for the download.

Streaming has worked well for Netflix. I can see Sony using this to help with streaming videos.

Non-gaming software. Streaming makes it so that any software can be ran on any device. This has infinite possibilities but is limited by licensing and other regulations.

I don't want to play my games over a stream. Otherwise I'd use OnLive. I purchase hard copies of my most wanted games. But I can see some benefits for having streaming options for other activities on or off my game console.

@thekazumalord The current "PS3 Slim" isn't even called "PS3 Slim" by Sony. It's a name that the industry has stamped on the product to differentiate between the 1st and 2nd gen models.

There's the PS3 and the PS3 and that's it. Technically, Sony could just call it the "PS3 Slim" and they wouldn't be wrong for doing so. It just might cause a lot of confusion.

@zulwalks @DiverseGamer Old games? I'm pretty sure you can buy some fairly recent games as digital on PS3. Some have even been same day as retail. I just can't give examples because I buy the disc.

For PS Vita, I'm pretty certain all of the games come out in digital and retail at the same time. Although I am not a Vita owner and I'm not willing to spend the few minutes to search Google, so I cannot confirm.

@X-7 @ClaudiusCaesar They think they can solve this problem with solutions like Gakai and OnLive. Consumers would only stream the "service" to their homes. So no hard drives are necessary to store anything. That's where publishers who feel like this would like the industry to go. Pay the same $50-60, but only have access to the game when online and no options for reselling or sharing.

It seems that everyone is taking their stance now and making it public. One reason is to continue to try to push the idea on us resistant gamer's. The other is to try to influence the next round of consoles and their feature-sets.

Both retail and digital are needed for the next-generation. Even if retail is the more expensive option. There are ways to solve the money issues at the manufacturer level without dumping retail completely.

The day that "games become a service rather than a product" will be the day that consumers lose a huge chunk of their purchasing rights. Because any future software can just call itself a service and all of a sudden there are no products and nobody can complain about the product they bought. The USA needs to follow Europe and make it law that software companies cannot do this.

I purchased the launch "Pro" bundle of the Xbox 360. So I had a 20GB HDD, which really equates to about 13GB of free space that you can actually use. With the content I had already downloaded there is no way I could have installed this game on my HDD without purchasing a new HDD. And Xbox 360 HDDs are way overpriced, so I wouldn't have done it and therefore would have been stuck with a less than optimal experience unless I cleared my HDD and played Halo 4 exclusively. This doesn't sound like the type of deal I would look forward to. Its enough to make me not buy the game because the cost would be greater only because I was an early adopter.

How is it that Sony gets a 1-up on Microsoft with HDDs this generation? Sony is usually the propriety media emperor. In the case of HDDs, Sony allows any 2.5" drive to be used in a PS3 and Microsoft sells proprietary HDDs at ridiculous prices.

@digi-demon you are the minority, but also an example of why such an interface makes it to production. Because there are enough of you who tolerate the in-your-face ads and having to dig deep for content.