That would have killed it even more.

All they really needed to do was eliminate teh 24 hour check in and make the kinect optional. they could have kept everything else the same and people would have been fine.

I guess I'm just on the outside looking in on this subject. I prefer cloud based & no disc.

If they have Steam like sales I like it. Hell I don't mind it as a option but with the size of these downloads I wouldn't want it to be the only option.

Plus, the cost per game should be cheaper if you don't get the disc. At least 5 bucks cheaper. You know they would not do that.

As long as we still have restrictive bandwidth limits the cloud is not a viable option.

Oh, I think that's just a given. When you install a game to your HDD, the physical disc serves as your authentication. It tells the console you actually own that game and can play it.

The whole point of the 24 hour check-in was to authenticate your game library. It was going to enable you to play any game you own without ever having to put the disc in. Better yet, you could go to any other place, turn any Xbox on, log into your XBL account and play any game you own right then and there.

This is exactly how Steam works. You can buy a game on a disc that's also available on Steam. Install it once and you will always have it on your Steam account. You can go to any computer, install the tiny Steam client, download the game from their servers and start playing.

Without the 24 hour authentication, people would just be able to buy a game, install in on their HDD, disconnect the console from the internet, sell the game to anyone willing to buy a "once used" copy and then play through the whole game for as long as it takes while being offline because the Xbox would not have any way of knowing someone else is using the same copy to play the game because it has no way to check ( <---- best run-on sentence of all time). So... now you won't be able to do this because even though the game is going to be on the HDD, you will need the disc in the console. You also won't be able to lend or gift digital copies.

The library peer share thing probably never existed. It was probably a clever answer to counter to PS3's popular stance and save face with consumers. They probably only caved and did the 180 when they realized they wouldn't be able to get the feature designed and working well and without opportunity for abuse before release so they decided it was easier to reluctantly backtrack. That and I'm sure game companies didn't like that Microsoft was actually telling people that they would make it infinitely easier to share games. Why buy it when I can play yours and I don't even have to drive to your house to get it and give it to back. Not to mention you wouldn't have to worry about getting it back.

This. Let consumer decide to change the way they consume, then let the big games decide when they want to released games exclusively as digital download.

When MUST HAVE huge titles go direct download exclusive launches, or direct download early release, people will purchase it that way.

What stops me from installing your disc on my system and just playing that? Do they already use product keys or?

It requires the disc to play still.

They could just authenticate upon startup or only the particular game when you attempt to play it.

So how is the 24hr authentication crucial at all? You won't have every disc in the system at once...

the 24 hour authentication was there when they were not requiring youto have your disc to play. Now that they have reversed their policy they have to require the disc to play again. BUT now you can sell and trade your discs freely where as before you couldn't.

I don't understand, you want the Xbox to be ALWAYS online in order for you to play a game? I think every 24 hours was the [much] lesser evil.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here.

The whole point of it all was that you wouldn't even need discs to play... You would have a library of games (whether you got them by purchasing a physical disc or by downloading them) which would have to be authenticated every 24 hours to make sure you still own the games in said library.

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