Somewhat informative article, but I disagree with the conclusion. Assassins Creed 2 isn't going to be the best game ever, it's not even an original game, just another sequel. So it's not like people are going to buy it no matter what kind of crazy DRM they must suffer through. I imagine that Ubisoft will loose a lot customers because of this decision.
This is a test on Ubisoft's part. They're testing how the crackers, pirates and market react. I'm sure if they make significantly less money than expected they'll scrap the idea. On the other hand if they make more money, they'll roll it out to future releases.
My guess is that they'll make less money. Even if a some people buy the game instead of pirating it, the abysmal reviews on Amazon will have a stronger effect.
Those days are probably just around the corner. At least one company is trying to make 1080p streamed games playable. They could install beefy compute servers with 8 video cards per machine in ISP local offices to deal with latency issues.
I've been playing it on my 360 and if you could forgive some of the seemingly simple things that Ezio can't do, it's a pretty good game. I like the fact that money isn't hard to come by if you focus on upgrading the villa early.
