This seems like people are hiding from the real issue here and that is the degradation of property in any sense. Many will point out that we still have the works of Shakespeare with us but few recognize that there were plenty of other playwrights in his time that he have nothing from anymore. Of course, we can all draw our preferred analogy (I think the used car market is the preferred on those wishing to have meaningful disks and GPS systems are the preferred analogy of those liking the licencing model). When we get down to it, we have to realize that all things are ephemeral.
We do not live in a world where we simply accumulate wealth (in any sense of the word). Things decay, get used and wear out. Whether we are facing the inevitability of the growth of entropy or the vagaries of corporate whim, things fall apart and we lose them over time. If you buy a house and simply live in it for twenty years, it may well lose value (unless the market has done some crazy crap) with the effects of weather, termites, a shifting ground and human traffic. A house made by a crap developer will deteriorate faster. Further, expectations in a home may change over time. People now want granite rather than wood counter-tops and hardwood floors are back in style now rather than carpeting.
The connection here is that art, as much as anything, decays. Most of it we lose over time. Some we preserve and reprint in order for others to be able to experience. Just as one can fairly easily have access to the complete works of Shakespeare, we will likely preserve some form of pacman as long as there are people to play it. This loss is inevitable, no matter how hard we try to stop it.
So now MS is selling games as licences. They are intentionally putting an artificial limit on the use of the intellectual property. I won't deny that it's a money grab but the answer is simple here. If this model does not work, MS will fail in this endeavor. However, let me suggest a different line of thought.
I've always played games on both consoles and PCs. I have had, in chronological order, a Apple IIe, an NES, a gameboy, an SNES, a Pentium based PC, a Pentium II based PC, a PS2, a Pentium 4 based laptop, 360, Wii, PS3, a Core 2 Duo based PC and a i7 based PC (current). That makes for 11 machines that were primarily used for gaming. When I got the NES, I stopped playing my games on the IIe and when I got the SNES I stopped playing on the NES. The gameboy never really interested me and the Pentium II was a fairly straight up replacement for the older Pentium. The SNES died when I got the PS2 and I gave the SNES games away to a friend. The 360 and PS3 replaced the ps2 and the laptop replaced the pentium 2 based machine. This keeps going till today when I only have the PS3 (mostly for blurays and netflix) and my i7 based machine. I have bought Baldur's Gate II, Morrowind and Oblivion on three separate occasions each and never once was I upset that I was buying them again.
Back in the day, I spent hours playing ExciteBike on the NES. It was one of the first games with a level creator built in. I remember playing it fondly however, I have no desire to go back and play it again. There are few games that I do have a desire to play again and most of those are still somehow available to me (still trying to find a way to play A Link to the Past in a satisfying way, but whatever). There are some who may wish to desperately hold on to everything they ever spent money on but I don't think this is as big a group as it's members may believe.
Yes what MS is doing is a power/money grab. Yes it's for perfectly greedy reasons. Yes it will screw with some gamers and some stores. However, I don't think it's going to matter. People buy consoles so that playing video games can be simple and the console business has already lost that portion of the market to tablets. With iOS devices dominating simple easy to play games, there isn't much room left for consoles anyhow, so they are trying to edge in on Steam's market: the more tech savvy gamers who want a more complex game to begin with. This is likely to fail also. Why would I bother with a PS4 or a X1 when I can have Steam and gog where I get access to titles old and new, by big publishers and indie devs. If MS or Sony want to sell me on a machine for the living room TV, it needs to provide something none of these "next gen" consoles are. I want all my TV streamed with everything in the quality of the film it was made on. I want fewer boxes and fewer remote controls for my tv. I want better quality sound for my high-end stereo system. Gaming is nice and all but I have a much better PC for that in a room better suited to gaming. Ownership vs licencing doesn't matter.
They all want to sell me another box but I simply want fewer boxes. I don't need to own a single game. I just want to enjoy playing them.
