I Want To Like The Xbox One. I Do.

The new Xbox One is coming out this Christmas, and everyone is asking: Do you want it?  Do you want it?
I don’t, really.  And it’s not because the Playstation 4 is better; it may be, but I’ve got a lot of investment into the Xbox at this point, and swapping would have a cost.  I don’t wanna lose all of my Achievement Gs, nor do I want to have to set up all my new apps and rejigger my Logitech Universal Remote.
It’s that I’m not seeing any games I particularly want to play.
As a gamer, I could care less about the hardware underneath.  It’s why I moved to the XBox; I got tired of having to remember what my memory was, inscribing my video card on the inside of my arm whenever I went to the store, and having to eternally upgrade.  The XBox has simpler games (I don’t think you could do Planescape: Torment or System Shock 2 on a controller), but I’ve been playing my XBox for four years now and have had to replace it only once.
What I care about is games.  Juicy, juicy games.  And I’m picky.
I don’t like sports games, because I don’t care about sports.  I am aware how huge Madden is, but that’s really not me.
I don’t like head-to-head first-person shooters like Call of Duty, because I’m not that good at shooters and I prefer unlocking bits of story anyway.  Running around on a map and shooting people for no real reason doesn’t trigger my immersion factor, and I want to lose myself in a game.
So what that leaves is a comparatively narrow band of games: a couple of rhythm games, sandbox games like Saints Row and Prototype, first-person shooters with good stories backing them like Bioshock Infinite and Half-Life.
None of those are present at launch.  Andrew Ducker squeed about the trailer for Titanfall, but what I saw was guys running in circles shooting each other.  I need context.  A game like that would make me feel empty inside, because I’d keep asking, “Why am I doing this?  What goals am I forwarding?  Why should I root for this guy, and why am I supposed to shoot that other guy in the face?”  For me, learning What Happens Next is the reward that draws me onwards.  And too many games are skipping the single-person campaign, where all the meat of the story happens, to head straight to PVP or co-op.
So XBox One’s initial lineup, and Playstation’s, look a little weak to me.  I wouldn’t want to pay $600, or even $500, for that experience.  The games I like will come, but that’s going to have to hit a tipping point for me where I see ZOMG THE AWESOME GAME, the way that Mortal Kombat brought me to the PS, or the way that Grand Theft Auto 3 convinced me to the Playstation 2.  And when that happens, I’ll whine to Gini and we’ll put the funds in and get that sucker.
For now, though, XBox One is in that weird stage where it’s literally as uninteresting as it’ll ever get.  It has the fewest games in its career, it has the most bugs, it has the most expense.  And for me, there’s no benefit in being cutting edge for cutting edge.