On a somewhat related note, I've thought for a while that the interesting thing about console games is that for pretty much its entire history, the actual physical media it was sold on, and the performance of the game itself were directly tied together. So a side effect of that was pretty much everyone equating the game itself with the physical media that it was on.
With the 360/PS3/Wii, most console gamers got their first taste of downloadable games. But since these were segregated and placed in a different area, people still thought "digital" or "downloadable" games were completely different from "physical" (aka, "real") games. Hence all the weird comments people would say about how they understand why physical games don't work on the new systems, but their downloadable games should still work on the new systems.
The introduction of the disc install functionality for the 360 was kind of the first taste of breaking that association between "disc" and "game". Now, you could install the entire game to the hard drive, and technically speaking, the game didn't give a shit about the disc anymore. Literally the only reason for the disc at this point was just to prove you weren't a thief. But since people are still used to thinking of "discs" and "games" as the same thing, no one complains about needing to put the disc in as an anti-theft measure (heavy PC users obviously differ, since they always had big hard drives to fully install games, so they have a different relationship with physical media than primarily console gamers).
Same thing applies to the PS4/XB1 now. There is zero technical reason for the disc on these systems, once the game has been installed. But since console gamers are used to thinking physical media=games, people are mostly fine with that, since it's a system they understand, and have understood for 30+ years now. Of course, one company asked "the disc isn't needed to run the game, so why do we need it inserted all the time?" and then tried to get rid of the need to launch discs. But of course, they still needed a "prove you're not a thief" solution, which led to all the fun times of May/June 2013. And since most people still think discs=games, that was a big shock to the system.
"always needs a disc inserted" won out over "always online" as the console gamer approved DRM method (especially since this method helps keep the "your game is actually a license" language unenforceable)