Cheaper, Disc-Free Xbox One Coming Next Year, Report Says (arstechnica.com) 75
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is planning to release a disc-free version of the Xbox One as early as next spring, according to an unsourced report from author Brad Sams of Thurrott.com (who has been reliable with early Xbox-related information in the past). The report suggests the disc-free version of the system would not replace the existing Xbox One hardware, and it would instead represent "the lowest possible price for the Xbox One S console." Sams says that price could come in at $199 "or lower," a significant reduction from the system's current $299 starting price (but not as compelling compared to $199 deals for the Xbox One and PS4 planned for Black Friday this year). Buyers will also be able to add a subscription to the Xbox Games Pass program for as little as $1, according to Sams. For players who already have games on disc, Sams says Microsoft will offer a "disc to digital" program in association with participating publishers. Players will be able to take their discs into participating retailers (including Microsoft Stores) and trade them in for a "digital entitlement" that can be applied to their Xbox Live account.
Re: (Score:1)
Mental illness is real, folks.
Support politicians who believe in improving mental healthcare. These people need help.
Please Try Harder Ivan (Score:2)
Please try harder Ivan. Clearly your post is meant to be the most unsympathetic denunciation of known conservatives on Slashdot. You're not even being clever here...
Re: (Score:2)
You're assuming that the disk drive remains at 1 tb. Watch for it to be 500GB or even 250. The entire thing is a trial balloon for their next-gen streaming only console.
Great if you live in Chicago (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The 'digital' used in the topic is for Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC. It's not a generic catchall for everything that could be considered 'digital', i.e. 'not analog', but it's pretty clear that the current slashdot editors are ignorant of this. as are you, apparently.
What else are they removing? (Score:3)
There is no way that removing a $10 bluray player would reduce the cost of the machine by $100.
Re:What else are they removing? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're setting a plan in motion that will end physical game purchases entirely and move consumers to 100% downloaded/streamed content.
Re: What else are they removing? (Score:1)
If you'll instead step into the Apple Store someone there can help you disable "smart" quotes on your iGadget.
Re: (Score:1)
That's not the main thing.
The main thing is that they're luring their customers into a walled-garden store where competition does not exist and they can pull the plug at any time.
The wet dream of monopoly markets.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And a significant percentage of repair/warranty problems come from hard to read discs and malfunctioning drives. Eliminating both of those issues should save them a great deal of money.
Re: (Score:2)
If WalMart takes a 20% cut for distribution on a $60 game that's $12/game WalMart makes. If you buy 6 games over the life of the console they pocket an extra $72.
Re:What else are they removing? (Score:5, Insightful)
What else are they removing?
The ability to buy and sell second hand games on the used market.
They also don't provide refunds on digital purchases except where the law forces them to, aka not most of the USA.
Physical goods are required to allow this, and most large retailers will do so for longer than required.
Good luck DLing anything on 10 GB/mo (Score:3)
The ability to buy and sell second hand games on the used market.
And the ability to make use of the console at all in areas where the best available Internet connection is slow and/or harshly capped, especially rural areas that rely on satellite or fixed cellular. How practical is it to drive a console and monitor into town to complete a download in the tens of gigabytes over public library Wi-Fi? (I didn't think so.) Andy Tanenbaum's "station wagon full of tapes" argument was one of consoles' biggest remaining advantage over Steam, and a console without a disc drive era
Re:Good luck DLing anything on 10 GB/mo (Score:5, Informative)
And the ability to make use of the console at all in areas where the best available Internet connection is slow and/or harshly capped
Pretty much. And to keep everything in context, that has been Microsoft's plan for the Xbox One since before its launch.
Many have forgotten, but the E3 prior to the consoles release, it was going to require "always on" internet connectivity to even launch a single player game, let alone actually need the network for anything.
They were also going to put unique keys in with discs for use in locking a game to your hardware and prevent reselling. A used game without an unused key would be useless, and require the purchase of a new key at full retail price (on top of whatever you paid for that used plastic disc)
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/12/4422014/xbox-360-is-offline-alternative-to-xbox-one [theverge.com]
Xbox chief Don Mattrick offered up his own thoughts on the Xbox One online requirement ahead of Microsoft's E3 keynote,
"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360," says Mattrick. "If you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device." Mattrick's comments appear to ignore scenarios where internet connectivity can be unstable or unreliable.
They only back peddled quite some time after massive backlash from pretty much everyone.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/19/microsoft-reversing-xbox-one-internet-used-game-policies [ign.com]
Xbox One will also no longer restrict used games, and will instead allow discs to be exchanged in the same way they are on Xbox 360. There will be no additional restrictions for trade-ins or lending games to friends.
and
"Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback," Microsoft's Don Mattrick wrote. "I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One. You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world."
Those facts are not important to Microsoft, and they don't even claim so. They just want peoples money, and this back peddle was the best way to get more of that.
5 years ago for many people this day and age might as well have been over a lifetime ago.
Microsoft will continue to keep trying until raping their customers makes more money than giving them what they want.
Since then, Microsoft has discontinued Xbox 360 (Score:2)
"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360," says Mattrick.
Since then, Microsoft has discontinued the Xbox 360. Thus they no longer "have a product". In order to return to Microsoft's original plan for Xbox One, Microsoft would first have to relaunch Xbox 360.
Re: (Score:2)
Back pedal.
There's no such thing as a back peddle but if there was it would mean returning something for a refund.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullsh*t. Used games are not a thing anymore, just perpetrated by a vocal minority.
Because "The PC Master Race" has gotten over this years ago - after all, stores like Steam make it much hard to "resell" games (some people do elab
Re: (Score:3)
Bullsh*t. Used games are not a thing anymore, just perpetrated by a vocal minority.
Poppycock. Used games are very much a thing. Retrogaming seems to have a steady popularity these days, probably just because it's retro but possibly also because it doesn't have any of these problems.
Re: (Score:2)
PS4s & XBoxs are already $200 during sales (Score:2)
As a PC gamer the only time I use my DVD drive is installing Windows. But I've also got Gog. Plus when I do buy a game on Steam it's at such a steep discount I don't really mind that it's really a rental.
Physical, or GTFO (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't own an Xbox One, but contemplating it for Red Dead Redemption 2. I want to buy a physical copy that I can still play in the next decade, potentially on another console if mine fails. When those servers are decommissioned, say bye to your games.
I know that's the way the industry is heading. Easier to milk the $$$ if you licence and don't own the game.
One of the reasons I still like playing on my older consoles. Just brought an AV cable this month for my Sega megadrive and dreamcast.
Re:Physical, or GTFO (Score:4, Interesting)
The Xbox Live service is the ONLY reason the Xbox division is profitable. The hardware is a massive loss leader for the Xbox Live Gold service (sure they're not sold at a loss anymore, but factor in marketing and exclusivity deals). Those servers aren't getting decommissioned until the Xbox division is completely dead, in which case you'll be playing version 1.0 single-player software on unsupported hardware. PC (even emulation) is a safer bet.
Not sure if that will work (Score:2)
I still mostly buy physical media myself, but pretty much every game I've bought for a long time now has multi-GB patches from day-one on. Even if you have the physical media will you really be able to play even single player when the servers are decommissioned? I wonder.
Re: (Score:1)
If you have no net connection when you put in a new disc, it will let you play it. If there is a net connection and it sees an update available, you can no longer play the game until you apply that update. Haven't tested the scenario where it sees the update, then I unplug the net connection, reboot, and try to play the game again.
Re: Physical, or GTFO (Score:1)
Well you have never realy owned the fame, that is some of what the EULA is about, mor often than not it grands you a note n transferable licemce(Atleast on pc, I've never owned a console so thing might be different. The only thing you realy own are the physical discs the licensed contents on. Well that is as far as I understand it, not beeing a l lawyer in London have probably missed so ting blindingly obvious so anny correction is greatly appreciated
Sounds like a great way to get rid of used games (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like a great way to begin to get rid of the console used game market.
There's no way getting rid of the blu-ray player in an xbox saves Microsoft $100. What it does do is create a level of consumer that can no longer engage in the used game market.
Xbone Redux (Score:4)
Noone's yet brought up how this echoes what MS tried to do with the Xbox One at launch? They wanted to mandate that all games be tied to an account before they'll run, and can't be resold/traded without also transferring the license. There was a huge backlash against this, with the cheaper PS4 not requiring any such thing, so MS backpedaled and had a day-one patch that killed the last remnants of the registration system. Seems they're bringing it back as an option. I guess the lower price is for casual gamers who might jump on a $200 Xbox but not a $300 one? That also have fast broadband to download their games? Who are these people?
Re: (Score:2)
" I guess the lower price is for casual gamers who might jump on a $200 Xbox but not a $300 one? That also have fast broadband to download their games? Who are these people?"
Fast broadband is not at all a requirement to downloading games. Why on earth would it be? Furthermore, this lower entry point for gamers of lesser means is highly attractive as it requires a very significantly lower cost initial investment. What many of them will miss however, is that by participating in this they will be missing out o
Re: (Score:2)
The $200 price point is for parents whose kids keep begging for an Xbox, but the price is just a bit out of reach.
As far as fast broadband not being a requirement for downloading games, I used to have 3Mbit/sec DSL, which was closer to 2Mbit/sec most of the time. Destiny 2 is a bit over 80GB, meaning that it would take nearly four days to download if I did literally nothing else with my bandwidth during that time. Fast broadband not being a requirement is, as CGP Grey would put it, "technically correct, in
Re: Xbone Redux (Score:2)
You can still download stand-alone installable games from GOG. Even some brand new releases are available there. The installers are always broken into 4gb chunks that can be easily burned to cheap dvd-r media. I'm not sure I am missing that much by not having logged into steam for about a half year now.
Re: (Score:1)
To be honest, I had forked the topic off to PC games, but I am not alone in that as others had mentioned Steam first.
But you're right. This whole discussion is about slack-jawed motherfuckers, i.e. console gaming.
Re: (Score:3)
"The $200 price point is for parents whose kids keep begging for an Xbox, but the price is just a bit out of reach."
Kids don't make money and are therefore not at all the primary drivers of gaming sales. This is well demonstrated statistically with adult titles driving overall game sales.
"As far as fast broadband not being a requirement for downloading games, I used to have 3Mbit/sec DSL, which was closer to 2Mbit/sec most of the time. Destiny 2 is a bit over 80GB, meaning that it would take nearly four day
Re: (Score:2)
Destiny 2 is one of the largest games released for the current consoles. The vast, vast majority of PS4 & XB1 games are under 20 GB.
Also don't forget that for large games, both the PS4 & XB1 allow you to start playing before the game is fully installed. I'm not sure what the current limit is, but until fairly recently the limit was a 5 GB downloadable to be playable.