Even though Microsoft may have taken away the requirement to be online, other shitty companies can keep the tradition alive.
I think it was Force or Boogie who said it, but they pointed out that it's a bit funny how Steam has had this for ages and no one bitches. Then consoles attempt it an a shitstorm happens.
When steam first came out people did hated it, it was pretty crappy taking forever to download updates, and wasn't very stable. It took years for steam to become loved like it is today.
The thing is when it comes to consoles you can't come out of the gate with things like this you have to work people up to it. When original xbox came out it didn't have Live, when the 360 came out it didn't have apps like Hulu or Netflix and the same goes for the PS3. What they should have done it come out of the gate as a more powerful xbox with the social integration, video group chat while gaming, and to really sell the kinect show that you can actually play the new one in a pitch black room. The internet stuff should have been on the backburner, get people to buy the console first then slowly introduce certain items. The 24hr requirement was dumb no matter how you looked at it, with all the companies having issues putting that requirement on $60 games did they really think people would go for that on a $500 console. It's called proof of concept, it's been tested many times but no proof of it actually working so far. The second thing that people have a hard time believing is this whole "Cloud computing" which is the same thing that EA/Maxis claimed for SimCity which people have proven doesn't actually do anything. I have also heard some developers saying that you can't really "cloud compute" select visuals, it just doesn't work that way.
The one argument I keep hearing referring to the X1 and steam is that because its all digital they would have sales like steam. Once again this goes to proof of concept, until I actually see a decent sale on xbox I won't believe it. Right now to get any deals you have to be a xbox gold member, yup can't even see the deals if you just play single player games. They also had a 4-5 day summer sale which was mostly dlc or old games; the only decent sale they had was AC3 for $15. When I say old games I mean they had release title games like Perfect Dark Zero, which really should be only $5 by now.
They also have been trying to show they can compete with PS+ which gives you free games with their Games with Gold where they give 2 free games a month to gold members. So far it has been pretty lackluster with 3yr old games like Fable 3, AC2, and Defense Grid. I know they are trying but they aren't really trying that hard.
I will probably get an X1 somewhere down the line, most likely after the redesign, but right now I'm switching and going with the PS4.