There's no reason that you can't avoid discs. Xbox One will still have the on-demand downloads, just like today, although it seems it'll be for every game.
The rage was over adding "cloud DRM" to purchased discs.
MS most likely had this planned out from the beginning. It's a great way to do PR. Announce something silly, get people talking about your product and not the competition. And when they do, it's on the thing you've decided.
Then, flip it back, destroying the one thing people were praising the competition for. Get bonus points for "listening to the community" and being "flexible".
Now, MS has dominated the press for a while, and removed the "one" big problem with Xbox.
Where is the discussion of how terrible it is that your Xbox that you paid for, running software you buy, on a monthly subscription, is shoving ads all over the UI?
The fact that they change the location of ads so you don't get accustomed to ignoring one part of the screen.
If someone brings that up now, people can respond "it's always something! MS made a big change and went against publishers, but you just want to complain".
Just like when VS 2012 launched with the shitty 1-bit icons and arbitrary casing everywhere. People complaining about "THE MENU YELLS" focused the conversation on that one thing. Then for RTM? "OK we listened and all caps are optional, can we stop complaining now?"
It's a possibly risky, but great way to control the conversation.
The rage was over adding "cloud DRM" to purchased discs.
MS most likely had this planned out from the beginning. It's a great way to do PR. Announce something silly, get people talking about your product and not the competition. And when they do, it's on the thing you've decided.
Then, flip it back, destroying the one thing people were praising the competition for. Get bonus points for "listening to the community" and being "flexible".
Now, MS has dominated the press for a while, and removed the "one" big problem with Xbox.
Where is the discussion of how terrible it is that your Xbox that you paid for, running software you buy, on a monthly subscription, is shoving ads all over the UI?
The fact that they change the location of ads so you don't get accustomed to ignoring one part of the screen.
If someone brings that up now, people can respond "it's always something! MS made a big change and went against publishers, but you just want to complain".
Just like when VS 2012 launched with the shitty 1-bit icons and arbitrary casing everywhere. People complaining about "THE MENU YELLS" focused the conversation on that one thing. Then for RTM? "OK we listened and all caps are optional, can we stop complaining now?"
It's a possibly risky, but great way to control the conversation.