If Microsoft were smart they would have left physical disc licensing as it is
and announced all the good news related to strong DRM-style licensing for download only games

"We will allow you to share downloaded games with up to 10 friends" would have been an PR coup!

You wouldn't mean something like....

So obviously, I don't understand how all of this works exactly. If you have a game from disc, then you shouldn't be able to lend digitally. If you've downloaded a game from the cloud, then you should be able to. So if you digitally lend the game to your friend, then you should be effectively locked out from the game, until your friend gives it back. Why can't this work without (the check-in once a day) DRM?

And replace lock-out with "let 10 friends play".

Once again, Microsoft PR and marketing is completely incompetent. Pretty much every time they said something, things got worse. I don't think there was any way to recover. They allowed the competition to deliver the message about what the Xbox was more than they did.

The only problem I have with the scenario above is it avoids one of the important goals (in my opinion) of the Xbox one which is the unification of downloaded games and retail purchases. Steam has done this somewhat on the PC. Some of the games you buy off the shelf at a retail store require Steam. After you tie the license to your Steam account, the discs just become a means of installation. You can download and install the game if you prefer from another computer or you can use the discs to install the game on as many machines as you want. The primary difference between the Xbox One and Steam is that you would have had more freedom over what you can do with your games. You could share them with friends without losing access to them which Steam may be adopting some form of (Good when Steam does it, bad when Microsoft does!), and you could even trade them in for credit towards other games.

but what prevents me from re-borrowing the game? and continuing, it's just a minor annoyance at worse.

Well first, your friend has to let you borrow it. Second, they could just throw some more DRM to limit not only the length of the borrowing but the number of times you borrow in a certain period. Like I said, DRMing the DRM gives infinite possibilities.

all i hear from this is absolutely terrible practices being imposed by microsoft, Alpha, i'm not sure if you were pro, or anti these restrictions. but if this were the case of what they would do to restrict trading, i for one am quite happy they've backpeddled on thses changes.

The proposed system was for you to have a circle of friends, and any of your friends could play games from your shared library. There was no mention of limited use apart from hourly checkins to make sure multiple friends weren't all playing at the same time. You didn't have to lend games to friends, they automatically had access to your full shared library. On top of that, your friends playing your games didn't prevent you from playing your games which opens up the possibility of playing multiplayer with a friend who doesn't own the game. Much like you can do now with a physical copy if you play split screen, except this would have been full screen and you didn't have to be in the same place.

And this is why FUD is bad people. Alpha is talking about what he thinks possible outcomes could have been, and slicer4ever believe that's what Microsoft was actually proposing, so he's off to spread the same FUD in other locations based on hearsay.

Edit: THANK YOU Alpha! Hopefully slice gets that last message.

I was against the once a day online check-in. And I was against the always-on Kinect.

However, I'm not against the features that tstrimple mentioned. I think they're pretty cool.

However, what I have been mentioning to you isn't anything Microsoft has said it would do. I've only been giving scenarios of what they could do with their online DRMs.

Out of curiosity, why are you against the once a day checkin? Is it principle or are you regularly in an environment that doesn't have internet for more than 24 hours?

As far as the Kinect goes, it will never be a viable tool for game developers to use unless they can rely on gamers having access to it. You can disable the sensor in the settings to turn off features like the Kinect listening for "Xbox On" when the console is turned off.