Nobody liked Steam when it came out either. There were a lot of things that kept most people away from it:
1. Always on. This was a problem both in internet connections (which were much more flaky back then) but also PC memory usage. Background processes were a gamer's worst nightmare before RAM sizes gained a few extra digits.
2. "Vaulted Access." People still wanted physical copies. They didn't trust Steam to be around in 5 years and figured they wouldn't have access to their games anymore.
3. Other things.
So, Steam was ignored by a lot of people, except for the games that 'forced' them to use it (Valve games:...CounterStrike and HL2 mostly.) However, (and this is the magic Microsoft needs to find) Valve made steam not suck. People learned to trust it. "Yes" it will be available. "Yes" it will be convenient. "No" it won't hose your experience. And most of all..."Yes" it will be economical.
Steam was considered draconian, until it proved not to be. And...importantly...it was 'optional' during that testing phase.