I know Microsoft has supposedly dropped the "you have to check in once every 24 hours" requirement because of the HUGE public backlash after the initial announcement. However, I sense in the Force (and the Force is very strong in me) that Microsoft *will* definitely bring back that requirement once they have sold enough Xbones and gotten enough people by their balls. The feature will be built into Xbone, and Microsoft will just turn it back on when they feel the time is ripe.

So the "24-hour check-in" thing is gonna be like a second job that requires you to check in every day. Well, except it will be more demanding than a job because a real job doe not require you to check in on Saturday and Sunday (and maybe Friday,) but Xbone will mandate you to check in, every day, including on weekends.

And Microsoft is a participant of NSA's PRISM program. Yea, so Microsoft will want us to check in daily on their Xbones so Microsoft will be able to report on us to the NSA if we fail to comply.

But how is it supposed to work?

What will happen if an Xbone owner does not check in for over 24-hour? What's the penatly if a Xbone citizen fails to comply and report daily? What was Microsoft's plan before they abruptly and temporarily suspended it?

I know it's gonna be a real problem for me because, shit, the last time I turned on a console was the Christmas-New Year weekend, the last time I watched cable was June for the last episode of Game of Thrones.

They won't bring it back due to the shit storm it would cause from the gaming media and the general public. Not to mention possible lawsuits no matter what the EULA says from people that suddenly have a $500 brick on their hands because a game forced an update that will make them go online to play games now.

Individual games themselves will probably start having more always online requirements, but that will be for both the XB1 and PS4.

It's the Xbox, not you, that has to check in. To clarify the Xbox was set to check into the internet once in a 24 hour period to authorize the Xbox to play games. The console was designed to be always-on so it would check in even if you had the console turned "off". If you were to have it unplugged for a while or lost internet for a while you simply would not have been able to play any games until the Xbox could check into Microsoft's servers again.

They won't bring back this scheme, though, the potential lawsuits alone are enough to dissuade them.

I don't understand how this could be enacted if people never go online. But I suppose most people would go online occasionally these days...