I just do not believe that an always on requirement brings any value what so ever to the consumer. You don't even need an always on requirement to do game sharing, gifting. It's purely a rights grab from the consumer.
I do not bemoan the loss of physical media or boxes, I like physical media but I like not having it as well, the one thing really missing from digital media that'd make me like it as much as physical media are well defined equal consumer rights as their physical counterpart.
If there was an explicit right of the consumer to be able to lend, borrow or sale a digital game, an explicit right that it can't just be de-activated at some end of service, revoked for some other reason(like a forum post, chargeback or something else) and that if the company was going bye-bye that they had to have a way to ensure the software would remain valid either by unlocking it or requiring some other entity to oversee and authorize devices to play that content then I would have no problem with all digital. Unfortunately that's not the way the law works, if MS decided the xbox one is done in 2018 and pulls the plug they can pull the plug on everything. Forever. Legally.
Basically
Divx 2.0. Those of you not familiar with Divx, basically it was a DVD, but not, that you put into a Divx player and could watch something and if you wanted to keep it you could buy it, on line. Yes, it was essentially like renting with the option of owning in the end but the concept is similar to the xbox one in that the divx player was also connected to the internet, of course over a landline, this was 90s afterall, and if you wanted to own the disc you were watching you'd basically buy the software license. Of course this information was kept elsewhere and as we all know watching our DVD and Blurays Divx clearly didn't last, it was discontinued and the service went down, rendering all those purchases null. That means even if you had your Divx player, your discs and a working internet connection you still could no longer watch your purchased movies because the authentication servers no longer existed. You just had a rack full of shit.
That ladies and gentlemen is the xbox one, the next generation of divx as Circuit City would have brought it to you if Circuit City also hadn't gone down the drain. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, countries could force some end game solution onto companies dealing in the digital era if they chose, something like a way to remove DRM in the event a service goes down but we're not there yet. We may never get there.
And I should mention, I have seen Microsoft pull the plug on a lot, A LOT, of services in my time. Up until the Xbox 360 I don't think they have ever stayed with one of their weird consumer projects long enough to make it to a proper second generation. I guess you can kind of count their phone business which they kill, suspend and rebuild from time to time as long running but that's a stretch.
I don't want to go all digital, always on, until such measures are put in place and consumer rights are codified. And again, this is of no benefit to me in the first place even if it passed. I mean, all digital does have some benefits but some weird physical/digital mechanism like divx and xbox one? That has like none of the benefits of either method and all the drawbacks of both for the consumer. Even Steam's in a better place than Microsoft's because if Valve did sell out or go bankrupt, someone would buy Steam, so long as it continues to work on PCs Steam would always have a suitor, its problem is one of compatibility as it lives longer and longer, but the xbox one, one day it will be a legacy system and if Microsoft decided to pull out there very well may be no value in someone else taking over to run servers for an outdated and dead system.
Also,
Cajunator, where's my devil Chiho pic already?
Lies, Tomoyo and Kyou are totally the best girls.