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Microsoft Will Launch Disc-Less, 'All Digital' Xbox One S Next Month, Report Says (cnet.com)
Microsoft's next iteration of the Xbox One may not have a disc at all, and it might be coming sooner than you think. From a report: That's at least according to rumors from Windows Central, which says a disc-less Xbox One S "All-Digital Edition" will be offered for preorders in April. The new device, said to be code-named Maverick, will offer a "disc-to-digital" program, letting fans turn in physical game discs and convert them to digital downloads, Windows Central added.
One benefit of this new Xbox, Windows Central said, would be that it could push the price of an Xbox down. The Xbox One S starts at $299 and is typically bundled with a game. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment. The move could mark a turning point for the video game industry, which has sold video games on discs and cartridges for decades. Some people still prefer to buy physical copies of their games, in part to share them with friends or trade them in at retailers like GameStop.
One benefit of this new Xbox, Windows Central said, would be that it could push the price of an Xbox down. The Xbox One S starts at $299 and is typically bundled with a game. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment. The move could mark a turning point for the video game industry, which has sold video games on discs and cartridges for decades. Some people still prefer to buy physical copies of their games, in part to share them with friends or trade them in at retailers like GameStop.
The New Microsoft Feudalism: You own NOTHING, they own EVERYTHING, and you RENT IT from them. Don't like it? Starve, peasant.
Fuck you, Miscreant-o-soft, fuck you sideways with a rusty chainsaw. So glad I don't use ANY of your 'products' anymore.
"Now they want us to switch to expensive, inconsistent, polluting discless xboxes!" - Propaganda faggot GOP
"No one is buying our console. What can we do?"
"Let's produce a model that lacks some functions."
"Genius!"
Circumcision is child abuse.
that removing the disk drive saves literally dozens of dollars.
I won't be buying this one either.
When Microsoft shuts down the store like Nintendo shut down the Wiii shop. At least with the Wii we still have physical discs as a backup.
There's clearly still a need for physical media, as not everyone can download 50GB in a reasonable amount of time. So why are not ROM SD-cards, or forcibly write-protected regular SD-cards a thing?
"Now they want us to switch to expensive, inconsistent, polluting discless xboxes!" - Propaganda faggot GOP
It's not going to happen.
With "streaming games" they can keep the games at Microsoft and not worry about copies. Push down manufacturing even further, just give them an ARM chip that connects to a remote gaming sessions.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
XBOX Rental Fee: 12.99
Game Rental Fee: 1.99/Mo/Game
Office 365 Fee: 9.99/Mo
WIndows 11 Fee: 9.99/Mo
Storage Fee: 1.00/Mo/20Gb
Backup Fee: 1.25/Mo/20Gb
Update Fee: 1.25/Mo
Hardware Recovery Fee: 1.25/Mo
Fee Payment Fee 1.25/Mo
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee: 1.25/Mo
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Levy: 1.25/Mo
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Levy Premium: 1.25/Mo
Redundancy Fee: 1.25/Mo
Additional User Fee: 5.00/Mo/User
and cut off people with low caps / bad pings?
At least with an download system you can download at uncapped times.
100 hours of 4K can get to 1TB. With the 5G push att's 15GB cap at $499 router + $70/mo and then what $10-$15GB.
because I pay on average $10 bucks for a game (and that's heavily skewed by the once a year purchase for a AAA game at full pop, take that out and it's closer to $5).
Console games OTOH are way more expensive. They don't go on the crazy sales Steam games do.
Most games launch in an unusable state anyway. You'll need the patches or the game sucks. That's because that way they can ship the disk in beta form and have it serve it's purpose to reduce load on their servers while letting them get the game out a few months early. I suppose it'd be nice to have games ship ready to go, but you'll either get lesser graphic fidelity (I'm lookin' at you Nintendo) or need to pay an extra $10-$20 bucks to account for an added development cycle before money starts coming in. Consumers don't want to pay more than $60 bucks for a game, so we're stuck there.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Do they not remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They'd download content and layers if and when they're needed, not all at the beginning.
In that case, for gamers who happen to live outside the service footprint of fiber, cable, and DSL, it could take months to play through a game while staying under the monthly cap that satellite and cellular ISPs impose on their subscribers.
The better way to do this is the way Steam did it. Ten years ago, Steam sales were the stuff of legends with prices almost comically low on major releases. There was almost no reason to not use Steam as titles were often cheapest on the platform and as time went on, the platform itself added value with Steamworks integration. Nowadays, Steam is the last place I would go to buy a game, since they almost never have the lowest price, but most games still activate on Steam. As a PC gamer, I don't have any expectation of buying physical media or having access to a used-game market.
Meanwhile, XBox built the platform first and now wants to take away the media. The only compelling reason to upgrade is that you wouldn't need to keep all those discs around. I've built a large collection of XBox One games, buying almost exclusively on the secondary market. I have paid ~$5 for each game and could probably sell them for about what I've paid. Microsoft is essentially trying to use the stick, when Steam used the carrot. Something like disc-to-digital (free of charge) would be how Microsoft could use the carrot. Something like a $100 XBox One S without a disc-drive is how Microsoft could use the carrot.
...designed for your living room. PC gamers have been buying/playing digitally distributed games this way for years through Steam. Set the pitchforks down. It's no big deal, in fact, it's preferred. Eventually you appreciate the lack of game boxes and disk clutter collecting dust in your home. Game pricing will be more dynamic and overall cheaper (like they are on Steam) because studios don't have to pay physical packaging and shipping, and they bypass brick-and-mortar stores whose real interest is selling used copies of games over and over again. The only people who should fear the digital Xbox is Gamestop....and tin-hatters, but that goes without saying, they already fear everything.
I won't be buying anything that can only "stream" a game. That is stupid and complete nonsense. The game needs to be extremely fast and responsive, so it needs to be stored locally. Unless they plan on putting in a TB of RAM and never losing power, lol.
Considering I use my PS4 and PS3 systems as Blu-ray players, I'm very likely to not buy a console they won't accept discs in the future.
Could this spell the end for Xbox, I wonder?
I've tried to wrap my head around how any of the idiots in charge at Microsoft think that this is a good idea. My guess is that these asshats are playing the long game. They're ok with anyone older than 25 saying "fuck you." What they're after is our children. (Won't someone think of them?) If you can get clueless children and preteens used to this, then they'll be hooked forever. The rest of their lives will then suffer and assume it's completely normal to not own anything.
In some years' time, XBox's mascot should then be turned into Joe Camel, as I'd prefer they be more honest with their intentions.
Did the previous XBox include a phonograph, cassette or 8-track device?
Otherwise, wasn't it already "all-digital" with the CD/DVD/Blu-ray (whatever) device?
[ Yes, I know I'm being pedantic, but I seriously hate marketing people. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If others want this, fine, but I prefer physical media. As long as the console and drive both still work, I can play the game forever. If something happens to my Live account... I just make a new one. On a tight bandwidth cap? Save 20-40GB/game by having it stored on a disc. Company that owned the rights to the game went titsup and now nobody knows who owns the rights? You can still play the game. Buy a game only to realize it's a steaming turd with no hope of redemption? You can usually get at least store credit on a return.
I'm sure the devices will still have a USB port or other connector, devices for which can be more than fast/large enough to deliver/store the game data. That would reduce console cost but increase media production cost of content producers. Still avoidable with online purchases.
But I had OnLive before, and although it had some interesting issues, I still think a stream-only game service is viable. They streamed HD MPEG produced by Nvidia cards in the cloud, and it was a great way to scale up the game experience without adding a lot of consumer bought hardware.
OTOH... you couldn't really upgrade your rig. Only your internet connection. Or maybe your subscription, tiered quality a la netflix.
You don't really have to abandon physical media to do all of this. Even just removing the drive from the device, and requiring an external optional drive can do a lot (remember the HD-DVD for Xbox?)
So the strategy behind announcing it might be to test the acceptance of the model, not reduce costs. But they shouldn't restrict to that design.
They advertised the PS3 as an all in one personal computer.
For the PS4, they still talked about it as a media console, but then forgot about that with the PS Pro. Seriously, where was the 4k blu-ray drive?
I wouldn't put it past Sony to remove the drive in the next console. I also think it would be silly for them to do, but I don't ascribe a lot of intelligence to Sony management, especially with putting Jim Ryan in charge of Playstation. This is the guy the questioned the need for backwards compatibility.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I play my Wii games off of a USB drive. The disks collect dust, but it is nice to have them.
MIcrosoft has been making dickless consoles for years... oh, wait, you said "disc-less"... my bad!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
unreturned xbox fee $1000
A decade ago Sony release the PSPGo which was an all digital download handheld gaming device.
The blowback from the Japanese retail gaming shops was massive enough for them to threaten Sony to never do this again or they would refuse to support any Sony console in their stores.
Since Microsoft is going to go this route itâ(TM)s safe to say that the Xbox will be dead in Japan if it isnâ(TM)t already. The Japanese domestic market is extremely loyal to their Japanese companies, and an all digital Xbox will be the final nail in the coffin.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
complete dependence on the internet and the servers at Microsloth!
Just how stupid are the younger consumers becoming?
Own your music on CDs? Nah, they just assume some service provider will always provide them over the web and the policies and prices will never change.
Own your movies on DVD/BluRay? Nah, that's old school... just stream it all and complain if anybody tries charging for the bandwidth,
Own your games? Why bother? The internet will always be there and be cheap and big companies never have crashed servers, never raise rates, and never change policies or decide that some content is EOL.
Never pay for something twice!
Are you ok? Microsoft is the one showing they are willing to pull the opitcal drive from their consoles. right now it is the xbone s. More than likely they will repeat it with the xbone x and then there really will be no 4k bluray on a console. If you want 4k bluray you have more to worry about microsoft removing it than hoping sony will add it.
Xbox One S "All-Digital Edition".
Xbox One shortens into XBone. This new version shortens to XBone SAD. Any other company and I'd think they were doing this on purpose.
A half-way house XBox sounds like a waste of time tbh - it prevents people buying the cheaper physical disks and the size of most downloads means it would rapidly fill up even if it packed a large hdd.
The XBone Sad edition.
With the PSP GO.
It was a PSP console that couldn't read PSP discs and could only get its games online.
See how successful it was.
Oh, and btw, Microsoft already cut original Xbox consoles from Xbox Live a long time ago, so there is a precedent for being shafted that way by this particular company.
Yes sir, it’s true. This Xbox has no dick.
M$ is something an edgelord would say.
I'm having trouble understanding your thought process, as M$ is the name of a string variable in line-numbered BASIC. Did you mean "BASIC programmers are edgelords"? Or "People who use a term for Microsoft that calls to mind its roots as a publisher of BASIC interpreters are edgelords"?
Probably pushing about 350 pounds with a closet full of fedoras.
I'm not sure what being able to bench press 350 lb and in charge of a rack or two of servers running RPM-based GNU/Linux has to do with anything.
Young people [...] watch movies on their 5 inch phone screen that has a big crack running across it from when they dropped it. They'll do this while sitting in a room with a 50" TV.
I'd bet it's because someone older is using the 50" TV at the time, and this older person has priority to select the programming on the 50" TV on account of being older.
Don't buy that console, buy the slightly more expensive version that still has the disc.
This works only if the manufacturer continues to manufacture "the slightly more expensive version that still has the disc." When Microsoft's Xbox division first floated always-online DRM in the Xbox One prior to release, the head of Xbox suggested with a straight face that users stuck behind capped or no Internet can stick with the Xbox 360. (Source: "Xbox chief: we have a product for people who can't get online, it's called Xbox 360" by Daniel Cooper)
So why are not ROM SD-cards, or forcibly write-protected regular SD-cards a thing?
Are Nintendo Switch Game Cards close enough?
Sheeple out there will still rush to buy it.
I know that I can still bust out my gamecube and play all the games I bought. I can still use my n64 and ps2.
Wait until Steam turn off some 'old games' or something. Maybe go under. Then the $$$ that people spent with them goes up in smoke.
"But...But... the cloud"
I'll laugh just like I did when the MS Music store shut down and the music people bought couldn't check DRM anymore.
I haven't jumped onto this gen and probably won't bother. Dropping the console price by a few quid is unimportant when each game costs £50 - that is not pocket change! Oh, that and the fact that I used to like EA's output but not since they turned into a corporate monster.