Why does Xbox One have a Bluray player?
- Thread starter blakjedi
- Start date
Disc to digital exists on the Xbox One, it's called the full price of the game. That's why I can guarantee you you'll never see a disc driverless SKU, period.
The value lost to Microsoft is greater than the value loss to you monetarily, which is why it's not done. It's like complaining about buying a PC with an optical drive even if you never used it in 2001 be uses you had a super fast Internet connection at home. Still didn't mean PC OEMs were going to rush out and create laptops without them. And can anyone remember the uproar when the MacBook Air was unveiled without a DVD drive?
Companies do not exist to serve customers whims.
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That's an immaterial generalisation. If you don't provide a choice, you'll get those who disagree complaining. With a DVD drive, those MacBook customers who'd never use it will complain. Without, you hear complaints from everyone else (which will be far more in the case of a MacBook as the optical drive is more important for productivity than it is in XB1 if you're just using it to copy games to HDD).
We're not talking about removing the drive for everyone to be in uproar (already had that conversation!), but providing an option for some customers.
I think it's pretty much out of the question entirely that the BR drive in xbone costs MS $50 each to purchase. If true, they got the terribaddest sourcing/contract negotiators in existence.
In any case, all xbones will have a BR drive, no exception. I can't be 100% sure that it will stay that way for the entire lifetime of the console of course, but for the foreseeable future there's not going to be a way to avoid having one installed, so if that is a hard block against getting a bone then you'll be missing out on quite a few great games for a very silly reason.
People value a product based off the features they desire. Unless given a choice of building out a product, almost no one naturally prices unwanted features and then subtracts that value from the retail price to determine the true cost of the features they want.
Is your planned use for a console worth the cost required to acquire said product? Yes or No?
People tend to keep it simple and avoid unnecessary cost analysis.
Whats the point of breaking out the cost of a bluray drive on a XB1? There is no disc less sku so its only an academic exercise that entertaining to discuss here but its useless when purchasing a console.
Is your planned use for a console worth the cost required to acquire said product? Yes or No?
People tend to keep it simple and avoid unnecessary cost analysis.
Whats the point of breaking out the cost of a bluray drive on a XB1? There is no disc less sku so its only an academic exercise that entertaining to discuss here but its useless when purchasing a console.
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I would guesstimate that more would choose a Kinect less sku and the associated savings (100$?) than a blu-ray drive less sku and the 10-20$ saved.
The games I want to play on the next generation consoles does not require another estimated control interface. But I don't have a choice so I will pay the full price for my xbox one
Well I'm not buying one... and very few of those games won't be on PC. but there are way more games than I have time to play in any event. A less costly sku would make a purchase more appealing.
There are benefits to offering options and there are disadvantages, cars have tons of options, unless you actually go to a dealer and try to buy the car without some of those options. Consoles keep it simple and it avoids confusion, but the fact that the blu-ray doesn't add anything to the actual gameplay experience does make it a feature they could make optional and a lower price smaller box might be more appealing to a part of that demographic.
As for the confusion to consumers issue, it wouldn't be hard to have a game code tied to the disk in the box that would allow you to use the purchased game even without an optical drive by downloading it... oh wait some geniuses got that killed... Perhaps they can bring it back with the version that comes without a blu-ray drive.
Optical is dead, some people are just going to take some time to realize it.
Sony does that now with some cross-buy Vita games, they also did it with Portal 2 and Steam. MS certainly could have done it with XB1 disc games, but they didn't want to. You should direct your anger at MS, no one killed anything but them. They took their ball and went home rather than trying to solve the problem.
I've seen this mentioned a couple of times: that's it's all Microsoft's fault & they should be blamed. While I agree that they made a choice, it wasn't as if Microsoft woke up one morning & said "you know that feature we announced a couple weeks ago? we've decided to remove it for no particular reason". They made the choice based on feedback from the public. They didn't do it in a vacuum. While I agree Microsoft deserves a lot of blame, lets no lose sight of the fact for it not for the backlash from "forum warriors" & the like, Microsoft wouldn't have changed their minds. BTW, this is coming from somebody that liked the feature, but don't mind the replacement either. I'm a pretty agreeable person.
Tommy McClain
I think you are the one that needs to realize it isn't dead
It's here for another generation and it's awesome.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Not really, I bought the X360, I used it, I wasn't happy with it purely because of the optical drive. In a day and age when DD is the NORM for all platforms except consoles, it's absolutely retarded, IMO, that there is no option for a console without an optical drive. Yes that wasn't the case when the X360 launched, but was certainly quite prevalent when the X360 S was launched. But it still wouldn't have been a game changer as most games still weren't available as DD yet. So it was something I had to live with, and I hated every moment of it. Changing disks to play games? Really? That's like playing games in the caveman age. Oh, how quaint, look at that poor gamer having to actually swap disks, poor thing.
Thank you but no. Thank goodness this generation will have day and date DD along with physical retail.And so yes, the optical drive is a significant factor in me not wanting to get either console. Not only because it's something I'd never use, but I'm paying for something I'd never use. Something that doesn't remove or add 1 single feature from the consoles, or games or apps on that console. A console without a BRD does the exact same thing as a console with a BRD. The only thing that changes is you can no longer use physical media to purchase content.
You keep parading the cost of the BRD as if it was relavent to the potential cost of a console without a BRD. But the PS3/X360 generation shows that to be a false assumption. The greater majority of people will always buy the more feature rich version which can command a premium above and beyond a less feature rich version. But there's still X number of people that would buy a cheaper less feature rich version as long as it doesn't impact anything in the experience. Kinect would remove features for not only people that don't want Kinect, but features for people that do want Kinect because it'd affect the potential inclusion of Kinect features in games. Just like I'm incredibly sad that Move + camera wasn't included in ALL PS4s. I think there could have been some potentially fantastic experiences with Move + Camera or even just Camera features added into all sorts of games as feature enablers. But sadly that won't be happening now that both the Move and Camera are optional on the system. In other words, I would have been far more interested in a PS4 if Move + Camera was standard in all boxes.
So sure, the profit margin will be lower on the console without a BRD but your potential install base will also be significantly larger. Considering the majority of people would likely buy the version with a BRD even if they don't need it means it will have an impact on your gross margins but potentially not larger than having a larger install base and hence potentially more software licensing revenue. And at the end of the day the end user experience for a console with BRD will be exactly the same as the end user experience of a console without a BRD.
And yes, at launch both consoles will likely sell out of the console regardless of what is offered. So, no harm in not offering a console for the more price sensitive people out there. But 2 months down the line? 4 months? 6 months? 12 months?
Hell, it'd be a better option to then offer a BRD less console for 100 USD less than to reduce the MSRP of your console with BRD drive by 50-100 USD or have sales potentially not match your ability to supply consoles.
Regards,
SB
I think you are the one that needs to realize it isn't dead
It's here for another generation and it's awesome.
At it's peak DVD was doing more than double those numbers. Optical is dying, netflix and other various digital sources are killing it. But I'm sure it'll be around for a while, just like vinyl records.
Everything dies is that your point? , the question is just when. And as vinyl proves somethings are very hard to kill. For the next (next) generation it's going to be very interesting to see if physical distribution is still viable. Until then optical is alive ALIVE!
I think you are the one that needs to realize it isn't dead
It's here for another generation and it's awesome.
Of course its dead , its slow as hell and adds un-needed cost to the system and supply chain. This generation is its swan song and I'm sure just like on the vita as the generation goes on less and less people will buy physical discs and at the end both ms and sony will have bluray-less skus out.
I rather they take out the optical drive and use that money and space to put in a bigger /faster hardrive. Imagine a 10k rpm 3.5 inch drive in a console or heck later in the gen you could see large ssd drives in there. 256 gig ones already drop to under $200 on sales. I'm sure by this holiday they will be closer to $100
At the moment I can buy FIFA on disk for (far) less than as a digital download, and I can take that disk to a friend's, put it in their PS3, and play immediately (barring updates
). As long as download doesn't provide a cost or functionality improvement, there's still going to be interest in discs.The Vita is a portable unit, who wants to juggle microscopic memory cards when swapping games on the bus? At home there is no penalty to having a disc collection other than getting off the couch to swap games.
They will never have a BD-less SKU, people won't give up access to a plethora of cheap discs to save a few bucks up front - that is unless the DD landscape vastly changes to something more like Steam where 75% off is common place.
Not really. You need to store the games some where on a disc. 500 gig drives should hold a good 8 or more games. External 4tb drives are about 200 bucks and should fit many times that while taking the room of a handfull of game cases.
Lets also not forget the need to switch gsmrs
Lets also not forget the need to switch gsmrs