The policies and aims of the Xbox One have certainly caused intense feelings on both sides.
However, simplifying the outrage at it to being "unable to cope" with a digital world is misleading and outright ill-informed.
Tens of millions of people have been "coping" with gaming in a FULLY digital world on Steam, and several hundreds of millions have done so to similar effect on iOS and other mobile phone platforms. These digital distribution models have worked because they offer convenience to consumers, an open submission platform that lets great ideas reach the mass market without the interference of a publisher, and flexible store policies (and competition from other vendors and platforms on PC) that lead to flexible and fair prices.
Microsoft's approach on the Xbox One fails on every front here when compared to other digital game distribution approaches.
There is nothing convenient about requiring a connection to the internet and having a bulky camera connected to the console in order for anything to work. There is nothing convenient about having media apps and F2P games locked behind a $60/year paywall when those things are free everywhere else. There is nothing convenient about having to reference an arcane set of policy guidelines to figure out how digital libraries work or how to sell a physical item you purchased. On Steam and iOS, I can use purchased apps and games while offline and with no timed killswitch on such content. There is no inherent need for anything digitally purchased to be required to be connected to the internet in order to function.
iOS is hugely innovative because nearly anyone with a neat idea for an app can get that onto the App Store. This not only creates new innovations routinely, it intensifies competition among existing apps of any kind. And while Steam (and other PC distribution services) are more curated and are tougher to get onto, most of them still let people sell games without having to sign with an established publisher, which frees the developer from the whims of their funders and gets more money from each sale back to the developer. Microsoft still only allows a certain number of titles to be released each week from established publishers, and Microsoft is free to accept or deny any title if MS feels that there are too many of that kind of game or that it doesn't strictly adhere to the restrictive rules of their store, which has happened plenty of times on the 360.
With pricing on iOS and Steam, individuals can change prices and add content at any time for no charge to meet market conditions, which has led to extremely affordable apps for all. On PC, there is not only competition between many digital games services such as Steam, Origin, and GOG, there are multiple vendors selling keys for games on each of those services. This leads to quick market reactions to demand and intense price competition among publishers as well as among distributors. Microsoft's approach gives them no direct competition to lower prices on their store, and big publishers currently have little control over pricing of their goods. Microsoft currently dictates the prices of all XBLA games and charges exorbitant fees for any publisher to patch their game. And Microsoft says they will stick with this policy for the Xbox One as well.
The true distinction here isn't about physical versus digital. It's about how the digital market is approached and set up. And when just comparing digital markets, Microsoft seems to be actively ignoring the lessons to be learned from successful digital sales approaches.
..But even with how bone-headed their approach is to a digital future, the bigger issue is how they are imposing all of the disadvantages of the digital model on physical goods without providing any of the advantages that physical goods traditionally have had.
Even with the option to buy full games digitally on 360, PS3, and Wii U, most people prefer to buy physical copies for many reasons. You don't have to download a full game to a HDD, you (usually) don't have to install the game, you can easily bring it with you to a friend's house to play or lend, and the customer can derive extra value from a physical copy by trading or selling it once they are done. And the prices are equal at best and usually cheaper for physical copies than digital a while after launch. Also, physical media is the only option for the 100 million Americans and the billions around the world without broadband.
Consumers give up more than they gain by purchasing digital, which is why the only digital services that have seen widespread success have done so by having lower prices to compensate for the lost value in a digital purchase.
Current Xbox One physical games policies remove most of the advantages of a physical copy of a game while not having any reduction in price to compensate for the value lost. This plan sees the issue entirely backwards. Also, by lowering the utility of the disc with their imposed restrictions without altering the price, an equivalently priced PS4 version of a multiplatform game (without any massive exclusive content arrangements for Xbox) will always be more valuable and contain more utility for the purchaser because they can freely lend or trade their copy away and use it without an internet connection.
The entirety of the Xbox One's policies may be forward-looking, but they definitely are backwards-thinking.
but the sharing is very much there and it's not under the radar, Sony gave its blessings, albeit unofficially.
