Hey guys, we've all heard the rumors about the Xbox 720 "requiring you to always be online" and how "it won't allow used games". But I think people are making a mountain out of a mole hill, I was thinking about it and I connected some dots. I don't think Microsoft would do anything to harm their business, but of course they'd do something to make it better. When you look at Steam it's a pretty dominant service on the PC. People like it because it free, convenient, cheaper games, and the many sales that go on (not to mention publishers love the hell out of it). Maybe Microsoft looked at steam and thought "why isn't anyone doing this in the console realm?" I mean, sure Xbox Live has downloadable games, but they're not usually cheaper than the ones in store and you can't pre-order new games. Microsoft probably wanted to implement something like this because, if implemented right, they could easily get the lead on Sony. Look at it from Microsoft's point of view, if they pull it off just right they would get all the third party publishers (or most anyway) in their pocket because the publishers don't like used games and the consumers would like it because of the convenience and cheaper prices of games. So they probably think with those two combined they'll be able to attract PlayStation people (since PC people already have this) and make more money. I originally thought that these rumors were a horrible thing, but now that I look at them from this angle, it's a really good idea and I'm actually all for it. But it would have to be implemented right. If Microsoft copied Steam's business model (because Origin just is just terrible) then it would be a huge success. Now the disc thing I heard is gonna be where you stick your disc in and it installs to your Xbox, they're using the same system that PC's use to install discs and nobody complains about that. Now as far as the whole "always online thing" this is why I want them to do something really close to Steam. With Steam you don't have to be online to play games. You can go into "offline mode" and as long as your on the console that the games are installed to and the profile that purchased them, you can play. Of course you wouldn't be able to play multiplayer games but that's not avoidable. There are some cons about this though. For one, the downloads for games would be extremely long, next the Xbox 720 would have to have a pretty big hard drive ( I'm thinking a 1 TB hard drive would be more than enough) which would definitely add to the cost of the console. But other than that I think this is a pretty good idea that could work real well if implemented in the right way. TL;DR: I think Microsoft is going to implement something like steam into the next Xbox, so I think they should base it heavily off Steam so it will be successful.