In all my years of gaming I have never seen the internet so collectively get together to degrade a console that we litteraly know nothing about.   It doesn't even make sense.

I see thread after thread and countless "news articles" doing nothing but bash a console that has never been shown, whose features have never been announced,  and whose games we've never seen.

I would understand it if the console had been announced already and people didn't like what was shown, but this is completely different.  And if MS delivers an incredible conference on May 21st with amazing games there is going to be some serious humble pie being dished out.  I don't even know if the Next Xbox will be my primary console next gen as some of the rumors do look unappealing to me but let's wait and see what they show first.

I am sorry but can I ask you, did you were on the forums before the X360 annoucements? The hate was a lot more horrible than it was now.

I was, and I dont agree.  People mostly just made fun of it.  They would say thing like well we know its not going to sell anything compared to Playstation and things like that.  Not to mention most of it came AFTER the 360 was officially announced.

This time people have been attacking the brand in force for months when we didnt have an announcement that confirmed the thing even existed

What does "rediculous" mean?

Well, practically every single rumor that has popped up has been negative, meanwhile MS doesn´t say anything..can´t fully blame people for feeling negative towards the system.

Hopefully on May 21st, these 'online required, no used games' rumors are proven false.

Agreed BenV.

I think people just want to feel better about their choices so they downplay or diminish the importance of the brand that they don't have. It's a pattern that I have seen on the web for the past couple of years aiming Nintendo and Xbox.
Ironically I got banned once because I said that some games on other consoles attempted to be like Halo or Super Smash Bros.

Much of the start of this generation seems to be about teaching Sony and Microsoft fans what Nintendo fans feel like all the time.

The problem is that there is so much smoke, its hard to imagine there being no fire.

Every rumor Ive seen about it has been a negative rumor. When they actually reveal it I expect a bunch of stuff to be confirmed and a bunch of stuff to be refuted. Just dont let it get to you and wait for the chance to give out a "told ya so".

Of course it is ridiculous because nothing is yet confirmed by MS. Sony fans seem to be in a good position by now and some overdo it because they have a big crowd behind themselves and many bloggers talk about the negative rumors. MS fired this one guy who spoke about always online - this was definitely one failure (the guy, not that he got fired). I am still looking forward for NextBox and hope they will be a strong competition for Sony.