The hard drive doesn't bother me too much. It is fairly trivial to replace the hard drives on the current ones. And I mean this in the opening up the old style enclosure, taking the drive out to put in the new style enclosure and such.
Also, am I misreading the tied to a console aspect? Larry Hryb stated that you can bring your game to a friends house and play it. You just have to sign in to your account. This is done as a very transparent up sale as once you leave their house, the friend already has the game on their hard drive, they just have to pay the fee to get access from their account. It looks like games move from system to system very easily. Obviously in the hopes of more sales.