Digital is certainly the future, however, the problem was that Microsoft tried to push it in a problematic manner. The best way to push digital is to use incentives to draw digital sales, not punish the people who want to stick with disc-based media. Steam sales are a perfect example of consumers willing to deal with DRM because let's face it, it's difficult to care about ownership when you get to play games for dirt cheap.

They're not entirely wrong. Someday not only will platforms be digital only, there won't even be a home console, games will be streamed to most people's homes. Playstation Now is going to be the first step towards it and once that genie is out of the bottle, it won't ever go back.

Your kids will laugh at you when you tell them you had to drive to somewhere called a Best Buy to buy video games one at a time of a coaster sized disc just like you look at your parents funny for buying music on vinyl or 8-track or cassette back in the day. 

Erm...yes, digital is the future, but not how they wanted to do it.

I think if this generation lasts as long as the last one then the next gen will be all digital. The funny thing is I see DRM being even worst than what MS originally tried.

Yes it's the future, when everyone has fibre internet and no bandwidth caps. Digital prices will have to come down though, for now it's cheaper and more flexible to buy physical discs.

Playstation now will be like Netflix. You'll still have to buy new releases, but if you're content with 2+ year old games than it's fine.

Streaming will never replace consoles, especially not when VR becomes a hit. VR is extremely lag intolerant, some local processing will always be needed. Plus people like to argue the benefits of 60fps to reduce lag, add a remote server and (de)compression delay and you might as well play at 15fps.

What MS and this guy didn't/don't get is that it has to be on the consumers' terms. Console gamers just aren't ready for a mandatory all digital console.

Even Valve struggled early on to win over PC gamers over Steam. And still when Steam launched and still to this day there is no requirement that PC games have to be digital (though most if not all are these days). It's just more convenient, and cheaper to buy digital on PC.

MS wasn't offering that. Game prices were going to be the same, and still are, for digital AND physical copies. There was little to no real ownership of titles and the trade-in ideas were convoluted and byzantine. The digital marketplaces of Sony and MS couldn't and really still can't match those on Steam.

MS was offering all the WORST aspects of digital ownership and with the rumors floating around about how this was going to be the final generation of consoles it's no wonder consumers shunned them. Even the best thing they had going (the supposed family sharing) was bound to have massive restriction and subject to change at any time. If anyone thought it was going to be a way to share games on a regular basis need look no further than how Valve has implemented it. It's limited and more inconvenient than the way people share games on Steam already. And they certainly didn't need to adopt all the draconian DRM schemes to make it work.

Now you have revisionists like this guy who focus on only the positives of MS's digital ownership policies (and there are several reasons, convenience being one of the major positives) and forgetting all the cons that come with trying to force the issue with the consumer base MS has built over the last decade. He, along with all the defenders of MS original XB1 policies seem to forget we have had digital downloads available for quite some time in the console space as if MS was attempting to finally bring digital to consoles for the very first time. He is right that digital may very well be the future but he, as was MS, wrong, wrong, wrong on how to implement it today.

Sony is winning this gen because on this matter they sided with consumer choice and chose to allow the consumer to adopt digital in their own time (their box being $100 cheaper certainly helped as well) and the XB1 survived last years debacle because they chose to follow Sony's model.

Every time I hear some MS exec say if we had only had more dialogue with the consumers it would have worked (he isn't the first one) I cringe and feel sorry for ANY gamer who buys that load of crap. It's condescending and assumes gamers are blind idiots who just needed more convincing to jump on board with MS vision.

I choose to believe that gamers saw they would be getting a raw deal if they bought an XB1 with those policies in effect and chose to vote with their dollars. We are an empowered, vocal and intelligent group (for the most part anyways) and MS was forced to come to our terms. The BEST of how free markets can work in favor of an engaged consumer populace at work!

TL;DR - Edited (but not amended to stay truthful) because I didn't actually read the friggen article (and took the statement out of context) which is posted here and deserve to be flogged for it.....

Though I do stand by my stance that MS got it wrong and that is why they had to backtrack and there have been other MS execs who have said they just did a bad job in communicating why this was going to be so great. Yusuf was right on though. 

Microsoft's original policies are whats best for them. I bet if Yusuf had his way he would cut out the middlemen between them and our wallets, Us.

I don't really like Mehdi.
He is right though.

Wow this place is sounding more and more like N4G, not reading articles and bashing at first sight. What Mehdi said is true though, not giving the choice was the problem and that's exactly what he is saying.

digital is the future.

xbones/MSs failure was not understanding change requires a transitional period and and customer perceiving change as a choice due to tangible advantages not due to being forced.