I agree, but that that is a problem with the distribution method, not the licencing model. The most reasonable answer to this would be that the game disc can be used to install on any console, but only allow that disc to confer a licence once.
I do not know how it will actually work, but I am actually excited to see what happens.
edit: actually, thinking about it now - I think this is where the always online requirement comes from. If i was implementing this feature, I would allow the console to install the game content and have it associated with a unique ID for that disc. But I would have to check with the servers to see if that specific disc ID was already used elsewhere. If this is correct, then I think the always-onlne "feature" could be relaxed in the case where there are no unchecked games installed. This is just pure speculation, however.
It's gonna be a lot of fun when the master keys leak and someone writes a fake server that just authorises every game. Surely microsoft know that this is 100% going to happen?
I'm sure there will eventually be some form of jailbreak for the console that allows the execution of pirate games.
However the number of people who are willing to jailbreak will probably be small enough that they don't really care.
The beauty of online activation is that the console doesn't need to store the activation key, so you can't leak it by hacking the console as was done on the PS3.
You just sign game activations with a hardware encryption module in a high security datacenter. The console then only has to know the corresponding public key which is not enough to authorize a game for a console that has not been jailbroken.
That's just annoying though. It's like not being able to move your music freely around your devices. Granted that you probably will probably only have one Xbox one, but it's still a pain.
MS don't seem to have sorted the licensing model, to make it convenient with their OS, I have a copy of Windows 8, that I want to move from one machine to another at some point, and I'm sure it will be non-trivial. Not to mention that I'll loose Windows media centre most likely in the process. Even the install for Windows 8 for me was an incredibly convulted process at the time.
When DRM impinges upon usability, and convenience - it's just a complete pain in the backside.
Just install it from scratch on the new machine with the same key, copy your files over and delete the source installation. Don't ever move it or move disks - it will shit a brick.
Did I say that I had the professional upgrade! If I tried to do that, it would moan that there wasn't a copy of Windows on the other machine that I was trying to install it on. Even though when reading the license - I am entitled to move it. I guess there's always the hotline...
The other point that I raised was that I suspect I'd loose my media centre upgrade - well I assume I would, which frightens me a little, as it was the main reason for grabbing Win 8 in the first place. But I digress.
That would be awesome since it would mean there would be tons of consumer pressure to increase upload/download speeds and hopefully get ISPs upgrading service.
In one of their presentations they mentioned "instant start", i.e. it downloads just enough to get you started then downloads the rest in the background.
Its probably the same streaming tech office 2010 home and student uses. It basically makes it unusable. Every time you click something it lags for 30-40 seconds while it caches dlls. Horrible tech.
I doubt its the same tech as the code to do this in a game would be totally different than the code for a desktop application. There's a big difference between JIT downloading and prioritizing so that you can start the game. I swear some people will find any reason to get in a shot against MS.
...until you have to drag an entire BluRay disc over the Internet before Halo 14 will start.