Every unconfirmed truth and every flippant quotation about the next-generation of console gaming is more or less the best thing about console gaming as a whole right now. Not the games, not the current consoles and not even the actual Playstation 4. Nobody really cares about the Playstation 4 until they have it their hands, which is why everybody sucks onto those rumors like a lollipop in a wheat factory. Imagining the Xbox 720, or whatever it's finally going to be called when Microsoft gets around to announcing it, with every disrupted rumor gives it an ethereal essence in your living room. You start to imagine the games you might be playing, the experiences you might be having, and then it's like you're having them.
The Playstation 4 is now just another piece of tangible hardware you don't have yet, so you're waiting. Remember what happened with the Wii U? It could have been a contender in the graphics race, it could have brought Nintendo games back to the hardcore crowd in a big way and it could have been the next greatest console ever. Now that it's out, the gamepad is pretty nifty, but without any games we're doing the same thing as with the Playstation 4. We're waiting. My, doesn't that Xbox 720 look fancy now, in all its imaginative and fantastical glory. It might just be the next greatest thing ever. Not even Shigeru Miyamoto could make the Wii U look like a better thing right now.
Even the negative rumors don't feel so bad, because the possibility always remains that it isn't true. Sony's and Microsoft's respective moves against the used-games market is both logical and illogical from the business side of things. By limiting the use of used games on your console, you shut down the secondary market, thus gaining profit from every copy of your game sold, but on the flip side you're cutting out a whole section of gamers who primarily buy used. Those who want to believe in one way, they can right now, and those who want to believe the other, they can do that too. Everybody's happy, the rumors serve all. But when the truth of the matter comes out, whether Sony or Microsoft or both companies make some sort of effort against the purchase of used games - subversive, drastic or subdued - somebody's going to get burned and somebody's going to feel like a champion, but solidarity is lost in the hope for the future. The burned unite against the future, the champions unite for it, and as every rumor fleshes out the pool of people looking forward to this holiday season becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, they might as well have the heart of a Grinch.
It's all about expectations. Sony is marketing that very well. "It's all about the games," they say, "it's all about you, the customer," but of course we understand that's a line, right? We understand that what we know about the PS4 now is just another version of a rumor, and unconfirmed truth, that attempts to unite so strongly that when the truth of the PS4's capabilities are finally unveiled, the real truth, that solidarity is not completely lost. And now you have a better understanding of console marketing as a whole. They love these rumors, they don't want the leaks to stop, they don't really care whether they're true. The only thing they care about is obscuring the truth long enough for you to make that damning purchase and commit yourself once and for all. In a perfect marketing scheme, you're making that purchase on another version of rumor and your confidence is not lost yet.
Of course, this isn't to say that consoles turn out bad, just to say you never know. The Wii U is a good console, but didn't live up to nearly all of those possibilities. The PS4 wont live up to all of it's possibilities either, but it may just live up to enough. As for the next Xbox, without any real details, it cannot fail just yet, not in your mind at least. It can be anything.
