MS releases Xbox One S All Digital edition (No Optical Drive)

M

mrcorbo

Foo Fighter
Veteran
Saw this on ResetEra and was surprised it never made it here.

From Thurrot.com, as reliable of a source for MS info as you'll find.

After all the years of speculation, it seems that they're finally doing it.

This would make an ideal match for a potential hardware monthly payment plan/Gamepass subscription bundle. $15.99/month for a 2 year commitment sounds about right or maybe $19.99/month for 2 years of hardware payments + GamePass + Xbox Live Gold.

Oh, also a disk to digital program for trading in your physical media for an account license for the digital version.
 
Last edited:
There's undoubtably a market for such an item. For anybody who has good reliable internet, never buys discs (incl. TV/movies), the drive is a large and unnecessary piece of the console which could other be a lot smaller, which also means it's cheaper. So many costs regarding storage and distribution derive from how many boxes you can slap on a pallet and how heavy it is.
 
I'm curious if some retailers are going to fight against carrying this SKU or demand a more typical margin (~30%) to put them on store shelves. MS certainly could sell through these at 70% of the MRSP to retailers and even take a loss on hardware since it cuts out the used game market and MS gets a ~30% cut on every digital 3rd party game and 100% revenue of every digital 1st party game, compared to physical games where they get a ~12% cut from royalties for 3rd party games and a ~60% cut from physical 1st party games.
0*tQN5U9TKH0GcpYlF.png

18j3z1b9en48ajpg.jpg
 
Last edited:
Pixel said:
I'm curious if some retailers are going to fight against carrying this SKU or demand a more typical margin (~30%) to put them on store shelves. MS certainly could sell through these at 70% of the MRSP to retailers and even take a loss on hardware since it cuts out the used game market and MS gets a ~30% cut on every digital 3rd party game and 100% revenue of every digital 1st party game, compared to physical games where they get a ~12% cut from royalties for 3rd party games and a ~60% cut from physical 1st party games.
0*tQN5U9TKH0GcpYlF.png

18j3z1b9en48ajpg.jpg
Click to expand...

Could give them decent gift card and subscription card margins, too. And inventory of these items is much easier to deal with than inventory of physical games.
 
Well, Microsoft already tried to sell a platform that wouldn't allow their customers to sell used games or trade among friends, back in 2013.
I guess this is just round 2.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Well, Microsoft already tried to sell a platform that wouldn't allow their customers to sell used games or trade among friends, back in 2013.
I guess this is just round 2.
Click to expand...

Not true. They had aspects to allow for digital license transfers.
 
BRiT said:
Not true. They had aspects to allow for digital license transfers.
Click to expand...

Forgot to end the sentence with "for a price"?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikka...gest-problems-with-the-xbox-one/#72a0d9741723
Basically if you want to lend a game to a friend they can either log into your account to play it for free, or pay for the game (probably at full retail price) if they want to play it on their Xbox Live account.
Click to expand...

Meaning you'd have to pay Microsoft again to lend a game to a friend.
Customers wouldn't be able to sell used games or trade among friends, unless they paid for the game again.


And that is what Microsoft is really after, with a disc-less SKU.




We can start the "But the PC's ecossystem is already like that and everyone loves Steam" arguments.
Which are easily brought down by the fact that Steam has competition as a platform and as a store. Steam (store) very rarely has the cheapest price for any game on Steam (platform).
A digital-only Microsoft console will have one store, and that sole store will dictate the price of any game at any time.


People buying into this will be limited to Microsoft's store.
I look at Microsoft's store and I see pretty much all games stuck at launch price. Unless you pay for Gold, and only then you get access game discounts.
Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves are all being sold at launch price.
Gears of War 4 is 2 years-old, and it's being sold for 60€ at Microsoft's store.

The Gold subscription will be treated like protection money from the mafia. You either pay up for the subscription or you're screwed having to pay launch prices for any game at any time.
 
No, those games are all free.

All those games are part of Game Pass ... but I'm sure you'll say that's only renting of games and not ownership.

I haven't paid for Gold in 3 years and Game pass since it was created and never will again thanks to getting them for free with Bing rewards, now called Microsoft Rewards. My gold is good through 2021 and so is Game Pass. If you're not getting them free, then you're failing at it.

I can't see how free translates to "protection money".



* United States experience. May vary by location.
 
Testing the waters for next gen. Cut out retail, cut out trading and lending, cut out used games and lock everyone into the MS store to max profit. Not very consumer friendly, yet again neither was paid online.
 
This is a great thing. The already sell an xbox one with a disc drive that you can buy and I don't think that will go away. But there are people who would like a smaller console without a drive they won't use. If this coincides with a shrink to 7nm they might be able to get a very low cost console out there that's capable of 4k and gaming. It could compete with the fire tv line up and roku and apple tv finally.

I would love to see an xbox one x come without the drive also as I would consider picking it up. I only bought Zelda for my switch as a physical game (was afraid their servers would be a mess at launch) and I haven't bought a physical xbox one game yet. For me all digital is nice.

As for stores. I've said this before , but they don't care. On software they make very little money maybe $5-10 depending on what it is. These games also require more security. Go look at a target or Walmart gaming section. Its either all behind glass or the games are in expensive security plastic shells. Both of these require a lot of space and money . They also require workers. Someone has to be called to go and open the glass and get the game , or someone has to use the magnet thing to unlock the plastic case and then they have to stack them and then move them to the back so the workers can fill them with new games and repeat the cycle. If they can replace this stuff with plastic cards that have no value until they are activated at check out they will do it. You can fit more of these plastic cards in the same space and you reduce labor costs. They can carry the same amount of games (if they go with game cards ) or just have money cards if they want (x amount of money on xbox or what have you)in a much smaller space. So they can make the same amount of money and devote less of their store to it. They can also bring in things that may offer higher returns on investment like headphones or controllers and other accessories.

I understand there are people who prefer the physical disc but we are at a point in time where the majority of games ship needing large patches and it renders the discs worthless aside from trade in value. This isn't like the 80s or 90s where I could take my intellivison and hook it up in 95 and play the games right away. If I want to use a ps4 or xbox one in 2028 I doubt I will be able to take the majority of games and play them right off the disc. But with the xbox at least and hopefully Sony and Nintendo follow , but right now with the xbox I can play almost all games released on every generation of xbox with my xbox one. I don't see that changing when they launch an xbox next.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Forgot to end the sentence with "for a price"?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikka...gest-problems-with-the-xbox-one/#72a0d9741723


Meaning you'd have to pay Microsoft again to lend a game to a friend.
Customers wouldn't be able to sell used games or trade among friends, unless they paid for the game again.


And that is what Microsoft is really after, with a disc-less SKU.




We can start the "But the PC's ecossystem is already like that and everyone loves Steam" arguments.
Which are easily brought down by the fact that Steam has competition as a platform and as a store. Steam (store) very rarely has the cheapest price for any game on Steam (platform).
A digital-only Microsoft console will have one store, and that sole store will dictate the price of any game at any time.


People buying into this will be limited to Microsoft's store.
I look at Microsoft's store and I see pretty much all games stuck at launch price. Unless you pay for Gold, and only then you get access game discounts.
Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves are all being sold at launch price.
Gears of War 4 is 2 years-old, and it's being sold for 60€ at Microsoft's store.

The Gold subscription will be treated like protection money from the mafia. You either pay up for the subscription or you're screwed having to pay launch prices for any game at any time.
Click to expand...

Where in the link does it state that MS charges for license transfers? From my limited reading of the article the author seems to state that lending games is limited to account sharing.

However this isn’t the case. There are actually two ways, which aren’t user friendly because they are methods that werent explicitly created with game lending in mind. One is to share your account password which would give the lendee access to all your titles with the caveat that they have access to much more. The other is assigning the lendee’s console as your home console. This method allows the lender and lendee to play the same title simultaneously while not giving the lendee privileges that go beyond playing your library. I use the second method to give my son unfettered access to my library because I assigned his console as my home console.

MS gives you two licenses when you digitally buy a title. One that is appended to your gamertag and one that is appended to a console.

There were talks of charging for a license transfer because a significant portion of license transfers of physical media involved retailers like GameStop and their used game business. MS wasn’t primarily motivated to destroy lending and direct selling of used games between gamers. But rather to commandeer a rather lucrative revenue stream that excluded manufacturers or publishers.
 
BRiT said:
No, those games are all free.

All those games are part of Game Pass ... but I'm sure you'll say that's only renting of games and not ownership.

I haven't paid for Gold in 3 years and Game pass since it was created and never will again thanks to getting them for free with Bing rewards, now called Microsoft Rewards. My gold is good through 2021 and so is Game Pass. If you're not getting them free, then you're failing at it.

I can't see how free translates to "protection money".



* United States experience. May vary by location.
Click to expand...

You’re not getting them for free either. MS is just paying you MS bucks for being a Bing super user.

LOL.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Well, Microsoft already tried to sell a platform that wouldn't allow their customers to sell used games or trade among friends, back in 2013.
I guess this is just round 2.
Click to expand...
That's not what they were planning. Their original intentions were lousily communicated. The actual details were fairly generous IIRC. This isn't the thread to discuss that further. @eastmen probably is the best person to ask.
 
mrcorbo said:
Oh, also a disk to digital program for trading in your physical media for an account license for the digital version.
Click to expand...
This is the most interesting bit to me to be honest. Would this service only be available for people purchasing the console?

A diskless sku when there's a big and growing digital only group of users seems like a no brainer, now that people are actually already doing it. They should also do a 1X sku version.
Although would've been better having diskless sku's released same time as 1X imo
 
In terms of cost reductions...

Disc drive - $30 ?
Chassis materiel - 1/2_stuff ?
7nm APU - e.g. 2x density, 120mm^2 ???
smaller PSU - ???
RAM - either they're still dealing with 16x DDR3 chips or they did a complete memory swap...


:unsure:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

H
  • Locked
MS vs Sony Strategy - all in one vs. mix n' match
2
Replies
24
Views
4K
StefanS
S
L
Could this anonymous informant be 100% correct? (Revolution)
2
Replies
32
Views
6K
strat_ax
S
Back
Top