After finishing the story I felt embarrassed for Bungie's sake. I think one of the reasons that this game has had so much success is that many of the players are migrating from first-person shooters and don't have such high expectations for what a loot system should look like, what features an MMO needs, and the progression that an RPG can offer. For those new players, all of these terribly executed aspects are just icing on the cake of their FPS gameplay machine.

@saturatedbutter I think the restrictive hardware is one of the main criteria for a console definition. The restrictive nature of the controller, settings, games, operating systems defines a console for me. I'm not saying this is a bad thing though, some people prefer the simplicity.

@rickphoenixxx I don't mind the omission of a disc drive. I think that the use of discs are on the way out. I don't even have one on my most recent PC build. Even on my Xbox One I have never put a disc in it and chose to download and install my games so that I don't have to fumble around with discs every time I change games. My guess is that a disc drive would have added substantial size to the unit. If you consider that it is aimed to run Steam predominately, that might help out with the rationale. Steam doesn't really use discs at all.