Your absolutely right on point 3a and 3b. I mean… it makes all the sense of the world to have it that way. The whole point is to validate whether you own the game, whether it be with the physical disc or online check-in.
At first I thought that they left this question open, but unfortunately they state pretty clearly: “Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.”.
Either we’re missing something or Microsoft is absolutely CRAZY! :O
Perhaps I’m missing something, but isn’t this still the best way to do it:
There are still some unsolved problems with this though. The main issue is the sensation of mass and momentum of the sphere, which compromizes the experience of seemingly walking on a flat surface. What is required is some kind of really advanced motorized sphere that anticipates your movements and ensures that you stay on the bottom horizontal part of the sphere.
One other interesting thing about this method is that you might be able to create a sensation of walking up/down a slope by keeping you just a bit off the bottom of the sphere.
The 20 min delay in communication kind of haunts me because you’re literally limited by physics, i.e. there’s NO HOPE for that to improve. At least I can’t think of a way.
I hope you had a fun time doing the research on that, but please stop wasting comments space with this lazy and headbangingly unfunny comment and try to add something to the conversation.