On Boxing Day, once eating turkey sandwiches and watching Outnumbered had lost their charms, my boyfriend and I went up the loft at his parents' house and dragged down his childhood Super Nintendo. Two decades after it was first released, and 15 years after it had been consigned to the loft, the trusty old SNES still worked. Even more incredibly, the saved game on Super Mario World was still there, sparing me the pain of having to complete the Star World again.

I thought of the dusty but functional SNES last month when Microsoft first announced its next generation console, the Xbox One. The "Xbone", as it has quickly been nicknamed, has some of the most drastic, restrictive copyright protection measures yet seen in the tech industry. Publishers will be allowed to decide whether you can resell their games, or even pass them on to a friend, and whether you have to pay a fee to do so. Even more alarmingly, Microsoft will require your Xbox One to "check in" with the company, using an internet connection, once every 24 hours. If you don't check in, you can't game.

The industry press boggled at this announcement, and has been trying to seek clarification from Microsoft ever since. What if you're just watching movies on your new Xbox? Or playing a single player game? What if you've moved house and you don't have an internet connection yet? What about the many soldiers who – not content with being part of a real war – love to play videogames on military bases? Has Microsoft ever tried to get through to Virgin Media or BT on a bank holiday?

In response, Microsoft burbled a lot about "advanced technologies" and "the power of cloud", and then conceded that, "with Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies."

Got that? You don't really own those games you bought on disc, even though you're holding them in your hands. You are merely playing them at Microsoft's pleasure, and if Microsoft should revoke its benevolence, then all you have is a set of very expensive coasters.

Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer has called these policies "devastating for consumer rights", adding that Microsoft has "sacrificed our freedom to own and trade games for no other reason than corporate self-interest".

But it's not just games that you now rent, rather than buy. It's the console too, all £429 of it. Twenty years after the Super Nintendo was released, I can still appreciate the pure untrammelled joy of riding Yoshi through Bowser's castle, but who would like to bet that Microsoft will still support its Xbox One authentication system in 2033? (Nerds with longer memories might remember how it killed off the inaptly named Plays For Sure, its early music authentication system, after it launched Zune.)

Now, this aggressive approach to DRM – digital rights management – is not unique to Microsoft. On the PC, the Steam portal pioneered a similar approach for years, although there the implicit benefit for the consumer was cheaper games. In the music sector, Apple largely functions like a feudal lord, taking a tithe and controlling the experience of both music makers and buyers. And in 2009, in a moment of almost implausible irony, Amazon deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from Kindles without consulting or notifying users beforehand.

Two things are different about the Xbox One farrago. All the previous examples deal mostly with purely digital goods – electronic books or downloaded singles. This is the first time consumers will really have to grapple with the concept that an object, something you can hold in your hands, is not yours. Your games console, and your game discs, are merely entry tickets to a playground controlled by a vast, multinational company.

Crucially, there is a second difference. While Amazon and Apple overwhelmingly dominate their sectors, making it time-consuming and inconvenient to bypass them, there is an alternative to the Xbox One in the shape of PlayStation 4. Its maker, Sony, has confirmed it won't apply Xbone-style restrictions to second-hand discs, and is currently having a lot of fun at Microsoft's expense, as this video shows.

In the next console generation, we will discover whether all the gamers who are currently furious over Microsoft's actions will be moved to take their custom elsewhere. If they don't, then the battle for consumer rights in the digital age will, effectively, be over.