I was thinking on why M$ needed that kind of DRM; I know it is obviously due to the fact that all games required to be installed in the console without requiring the disk in order to be played (so in order to prevent the disk to go to endless quantity of users, they need to register the disk to your ID, and go online every 24 hrs, so that you are unable to play the game if you sell it).    BUT why the hell they require every game to be installed in the first place? and why the hell the disk would not be necessary? I think it is because to Bluray licensing.    The disks are just only content providers in this case, so the content is not played directly from the disk in order to be played.   I bet that by doing so M$ is paying less for rights of using Bluray as disk format.   I would not be surprised at all if when playing a Bluray movie, before it actually plays, that it would copy a small part of the movie (200mb) to the HDD, and as the movie plays the content in the hard disk keeps changing.  It would be something like "streaming" the content from the BR to the HDD.

They could have avoided all the BR problems if they made a custom format for their games, just like Nintendo, BUT if that was the case they would not be the media center of your living room, as they are aiming to be.

And, well, considering Sony does not have to worry about any fee of the BR, they dont require every game to be installed, and if you install it in order to enhance the loadings, you would still require the disk (because they can actually read the data from the disk), so the problem is avoided.

So people what do you think about my theory?

Makes sense. This is why they did this with the 360, too: to get out of paying royalties for having a DVD player in their console.

the reason is that every game can be made with that in mind. if a developer knows that every game will be 100% on the hdd, they have more possibilities as if it would be only an option.

Certainly a thought out, intelligent theory.

I know it is nice feature if the developers are willing to use it properly, BUT why the hell the disk would not be necessary? It makes no sense.

I think they chose this format so they can push everyone to digital distribution as it fully negates the need for a disc. The disc is worthless as you are entitled to the purchased content... not the physical disc anymore.

Pretty soon I bet they won't even include discs. Just a QR coded ticket that Kinect can scan and then you start downloading/playing from the cloud.

Really all this DRM, cloud, and other tools they've included point to this singular end.

So you are saying, that they made it just to screw people? If that is the case, they succeded lol.  I really think there needs to be something bigger behind the curtain.

I don't think that's the reason for requiring games to be installed to the HDD. It's all part of a grand overarching vision that makes things as painless and streamlined as possible. They also require it (and Kinect) so that when a developer makes a game, that will be a standard unlike this gen where they had to take into account arcade models without HDD's. Doing it this way is less trouble for developers and makes things more standardized and consistent.

That is also a step in the digital only direction that they are trying to go to.

How M$ designs the machine to interact with the BR, is M$ responsability.

I understand the installation can enhance the experience in some ways, but why not require the disk afterwards?

why should you still use the disc when the console doesn't need the disc anymore? if you watched the conference they said something like "switching between a movie, game and tv seamless". does it sound seamless if you have to stand up from your couch and search for the disc of the game you want to play before you can play it?

instead of one second or a few seconds, this would take a minute or more to do that and start the game.