Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
It still seems to me like people have more of a problem with this as a matter of principle than they actually will in practice.
Considering this is the most blatantly anti-consumer console I've ever seen, if you don't have a problem with it, at the very least in principle, then you're probably a Microsoft employee.

I really don't see how this is meaningfully different than the experience I already have on Steam (it works both ways Vivi ) right now, which does require me to authenticate every once in a while to access my collection.
At various times over the years I've been offline for 1-2 weeks when moving or changing ISP's and the like. I've also got a netbook I put Steam on to play some older titles on the go, and I could count the number of times I've had that netbook online in the last five years with one hand and still not run out of fingers. Guess what I've never had to do to play any of my Steam games? Now, if there are actually games on Steam that require me to be online every now and then to keep playing, then I have a problem with that as well. But it's not hard to see that if I've never come across this ever in my entire life that the requirements aren't nearly as stringent as requiring me to be online once every 24 hours. That sort of restriction will fundamentally lock out millions of potential customers, including people who bought a 360.

And don't even get me started on their basically handing publishers the keys to the kingdom on used games. And before you reply with the predictable "well you can't resell games on the PC either," that's true and that is a problem. But the difference is that companies like Valve at least recognize that really good sales benefit consumers and the industry and engage in them often. Microsoft, on the other hand, rarely discounts their digital games, even long after release when prices on other platforms have dropped significantly. And that's what they do when there's already a lot of price competition from used games and other platforms. I don't even want to think about how bad things would be with them including the ability to remove one of the major sources of price competition.

However, I do think they need to clarify exactly what happens when you don't sign in for a day, and how you remedy the situation.
They've already stated you can't play your games until you log in again. How much more clarification do you need to recognize it's a stupid idea?