I strongly believe that the Family sharing option could still work today. Even with the reversal of DRM.
See the thing is that ALL of this could work even without DRM and blocking used games all through the power of the cloud CHOICE.
Let me explain.
I buy a physical disc, i can use that disc just like i can on Xbox 360. No change there.
I buy a digital download. The game can download to one Xbox console with your live account. The game becomes activated on your live account. You can play the game online or offline. You can log in and download it on another console as long as you deactivate it on the main console first.
You can view all your digital download games on your console and choose to activate family sharing which allows up to 5 (10 is too many and publishers would complain like they did with Sony) people to access your game no matter where they are/which live account they use. This could be done and allow people to play the games.
Now publishers may not like the fact family sharing works on 5 devices at the same time. Publishers would prefer only one person plays at a time. So the best way to solve that is to make sure only 1 person can play at a time ofc.
So the best thing to do without getting too restrictive is require the home console (one with the original game) to be connected to the internet for the family sharing feature to work. Similar to how you need internet to broadcast on ustream/twitch. When you lose your internet connection on your main console then the family sharing system drops after say an hour or something and no one can play the games. This is a good inbetween as it's not a forced check and is up to the user to enable or disable. The internet connection is just for the family sharing system and no other part of the system. ANd like i said, just digital games only.
No mandatory check in to play all games, no always online. You decide when family sharing is enabled or disabled. Family sharing ONLY works on digital download games. This gives people an incentive to buy digital and helps MS move towards "the future". Digital download games can still be downloaded on any console ofc as that requires an internet connection to even download the game so that would verify if you've deactivated on the main console.
Publishers would never allow a system like this though.
But anyway. We don't know what Microsoft family sharing even was. There were rumours flying around that it was just one person who could play it out of the 10 and it was just a demo mode/single player mode rather than the full game/online.
Thoughts?
