I don't see their policies as anti-consumer. Sure, they couldn't have done a worse job communicating their choices. But even GAF is filled with comments that lament the loss of the original vision.
I currently own Forza 5 as my only disc based game, the rest is purely digital. And I rarely play it, because it's a hassle to dig out the disc for just one quick lap on the Ring.
In the original vision, I wouldn't need the disc to play.
Then there is the matter with pricing on digital purchases. You can find great deals for games out there, but then you're still stuck with the disc.
In the original vision, you'd be able to buy a physical game, and just use the digital license. You'd just skip the download by inserting the disc.
But you'd be stuck with your purchases, right? You wouldn't be able to trade your games! Wrong - you'd just have to "deregister" your game/license. It's unclear if you could do it on your own, granted, but it wouldn't be a hassle to sell your games in a Gamestop etc.
But if you don't want to deregister? What if you would just lend the game to a friend? Well, in the original vision (also like today), you'd just go over to your friends place and sign in, and you can both play. Or, not unreasonable to think of, your close friend would be listed as a family member, with complete access to you complete digital library (which, again, would've included your whole PHYSICAL library).
I struggle hard to find anything anti-consumer in this.
There's one problem, though. One caveat. People could just buy a disc, install the game, play the game without the disc and give the physical game to another person, who'd also just play the game without the disc, and so on. So you would NEED a mechanism in place to check if you actually do own the license for the game, or if the same license is in use by several systems at once. Therefore, you'd need some kind of 24h license check with XBL. And this is why there was this "always on" requirement. And me, personally, I don't see anything wrong with that.
But the internet, including GAF, cried havoc and thus this really forward thinking way of handling game licenses was discarded and reverted back to the way things were back in 2005. And thus I'm still stuck switching discs for this crappy game I only have in physical form. Sucks.