I'm pretty happy, but with the truth behind the family sharing plan having been revealed, it occurs to me that I could be a lot happier!

No longer requiring the disc once the medium is installed on the system? I'd call that a fair middleground from reliance of the physical disk and going full-digital. Hell, even my first Steam entries were physical titles that I had purchased and registered through Steam, before I started moving towards the cheaper, digital option, so I can see it as Microsoft's attempt to move in a direction, but not burn it's bridges by going all-out (not to mention the loss of retail advertising in-store).

The family sharing thing is still an area that needs thought, because there's too many factors to take into consideration on both sides. Will it affect sales of games that have a short amount of gameplay? Will people be forming informal family trees just for the benefit of playing games they didn't buy? the problem is, both sides are trying to gain ground in digital distribution compared to physical media. The problem stems from the platform being finite (ie. A push for developers equals a loss for consumers, and vice versa). It was an interesting idea, but once again, shortsighted in the many different situations with ownership already established in gaming.

Microsoft's agenda didn't involve genocide, so I'll dismiss such a statement as going overboard.

Now, think of this from a logical standpoint. If Microsoft DID have intentions to screw over consumers like you said, why would they be open and honest with how the system was going to work? Yes, people didn't agree with it, and they changed it accordingly. Do you think they had this intention fromt he start? If anything, if their intentions were as you say, we wouldn't have seen them reverse the decision yesterday, and go on to continue to say that their vision for the console is the correct one. The problem is, when you have an intricate system such as an online-capable games console, you can't just change the rules overnight, especially if that console is already in production. After the initial backlash, they probably had to weigh their options of the losses associated with backtracking from their initial idea, then develop a strategy to roll it back to a similar setup to what you see today...

All moot because it was just timed demos, anyway. A completely laughable "feature".

And that's what I mean. I'm not saying they didn't start with the idea of an all digital console, then decide that people weren't ready to be weaned off retail yet and that they couldn't afford to piss off retailers at the beginning of the generation by cutting them out of game sales altogether, thus resulting in compromises to their original vision. I'm saying that every single compromise that was made to that vision seemed to have been to the detriment of the consumer. Everything for Microsoft, and nothing for you.

But you can see that's probably WHY they went to such an extent as to make it timed demos. Once again, it's a frontier that nobody has really stepped into before (not even Steam. They're only now talking about potential game sharing capabilities), so while I dismiss Microsoft's idea for their view on this, I understand that it's most likely going to take many attempts (most likely by different companies) to find the right "middle ground" in this. It's still a feature nonetheless (one that I'd have no intention of ever trying), in that it's something other than nothing that was previously there.

And that's probably another reason why their vision failed, because they were trying to establish rules in too many new frontiers at once...a side effect of trying to patch oversights with more oversights, until it became a complicated mess....

I still think that's too charitable. Yeah, that's the challenge they faced, but a better company could navigate such waters (actually, a better company has) without turning the entire internet against them.

Microsoft didn't fail because digital distribution is some new thing. They failed because they are bad at determining what consumers actually want.

Lol what o'm trying to say is that there is no evil or maliciousness when looked at by the source who is doing it. MS were trying to bring in a new system that hampers gaming but they didn't look at it that way.

Honestly, i think it was a source behind MS that pushed them to do this. MS is an American company and there is some weird sh!t going on here in America. They were basically going to use the Xbox One to help ease people into the New World Order. That will be the era where we lose our privacy. They also want more control.

but i'm not 100% sure

I think that’s exactly what they did. It's what they do. Look at MS history, from the very start. It's been buy and steal their way to the top. And take every penny they can while giving as little as possible. You'd be surprised how malicious the higher ups of big companies can be. While the little guy (programmer) is in love with the idea. The big boss sees dollar signs, "yes this is exactly how well fuck them". 

Lol! I know, i know

but its true though

Edit: I'm not saying the MS are Nazis. I'm talking about the malicious part

Well of course icrosoft want more control over their market, but any company could just say "Hey let's be an asshole corporation and fuck over consumer rights to help our bottom line", but the problem with that is that they know they'll get consumer backlash, and I don't think Microsoft is stupid enough to willingly fall into that hole, because it's an incredibly difficult place to get out of.

Were there external influences? It's possible. In fact, it wouldn't suprise me if Microsoft went up to somebody like EA and said "Hey we have this great idea for optional DRM that we're going to put in the Xbox One", and those developers backed up and said that if they don't add these extra oversights (which IMO seem tacked on to the original idea, whether it was Microsoft's idea to do that, or somebody else), then they wont get their 3rd party support. Ultimately that means that while the oversights might not have been Microsoft's original idea, they're the ones responsible for the consumer backlash, since they're the ones who were trying to shift the goalposts without consideration of consumer rights.