Why do you assume that's a limitation for an online console? You only need to be online to download a game and renew a digital license to play the game (which then works offline with an expiry window). That's how digital PS4, Xbox, and Steam games work. You only need to be online every once in a while, the "always online" thing was just FUD that was being bandied about by motivated critics of the idea.
The difference in the Xbox One plan from 2013 is that they wanted the disc just to be install media and still manage all of the game licenses online. In exchange there would be a lot more features and freedom in selling, sharing, trading and loaning digital licences as if they were physical disks. This was actually a play to cut out Gamestop's secondary market that was a parasitic drag on the primary market. The primary market is what was paying game creators and funding new and better games, but Gamestop was pushing their used inventory over new sales because it represented almost pure profit for them. (Hey man, why spend $60 on a new one when I got this used one for $53 that I only paid some dumb kid $15 for?)
So was Microsoft wrong? Yeah, because consumers and Gamestop freaked the fuck out on them. Technologically it wasn't a bad move, and it would have been a better system for people who actually make the games. It was not, however, technologically untenable, bad for consumers, or even particularly groundbreaking (see Google Play, Steam, iTunes, the App Store). Eventually consoles will go that way, but Microsoft tried to do it way too early.