As a gamer, one basic presumption I have is that when I buy a game, I have a certain aspect of control and ownership over it. Granted, when you buy games through Steam, PSN and Xbox Live, that feeling is diminished, as you are simply buying a license rather than a physical copy, but if the 720 required players to be connected to the web, it won't matter whether you have a disc or a digital file; Microsoft will own your game and dictate when you are able to play it, which to me, is absolutely absurd. What if you're going on a boring, family-enforced holiday, and you take the 720 along to stave off cabin fever? What if the Internet goes down? You won't be able to play a game you've paid upwards of £40 for (at launch). What if your Internet connection wavers mid-game? Will you lose all your progress? Given the unreliable nature of wireless Internet also, dropped connections are going to be a frequent occurrence, something that will be difficult to get around if Microsoft's online-only rule is strict. Also, it's a closed-minded business model that would completely ignore all those people living in rural areas - America in particular still has millions of people on DSL and dial-up connections - who simply have no choice but to play on a low-speed or unreliable connection, or perhaps they don't even have web access at all if they're that isolated.