Xbox Series X [XBSX] [Release November 10 2020]

[Caayn]

I can understand why Microsoft would choose to no longer include a discdrive by default for a potential XSX refresh. I do hope that there'll be a seperate add-on available similar to the rumours going around for a future PS5 refresh/pro/etc model. As it currently stands a large portion of my library would become unusable with a discless refresh.

I do still prefer physical media when it comes to games. Even with the knowledge that it often doesn't include day one patches.

This would be retail suicide.

Xbox retail in Europe is already on life support.

The disc install being slower than my internet connection is not really a selling point.

While that's true. You can still preload/download games, even if you don't own a digital license, through the Xbox mobile app.

 

[cheapchips]

I assume large supermarkets elsewhere in the world are the similar to the uk, and have a large entertainment section. When I was shopping last night, it was a bit weird passing big Xbox section and think 'that's not going to be there in 5 yrs'.

I then walk past the dvds, so who knows.

People serious about game preservation and ownership need another campaign beyond lamenting the death of physical media. Reality is it died in gen8, it just keeps spluttering on for a bit.

 

[fehu]

I do hope that there'll be a seperate add-on available

Yeah, 499$ in 2024 plus 159$ for an external br-reader, for the same product but cylindrical and not parallepipedal.

 

[fehu]

I assume large supermarkets elsewhere in the world are the similar to the uk, and have a large entertainment section. When I was shopping last night, it was a bit weird passing big Xbox section and think 'that's not going to be there in 5 yrs'.

Almost the same here: when I pass the entertainment section I say "where is the Xbox section?"

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I find it really hard to believe they wouldn't sell a model with a disc drive. There are tons of copies of games sitting on shelves across the world. Even if disc users were the minority, it wouldn't make sense to scrap the disc drive option.

Is this going to make a comeback?
View attachment 9615

Maybe. Sony are looking at that. Could be sold at a profit. But of course games being published to disc makes no sense, so what content would you get??

 

[Shifty Geezer]

'Ripping the bandaid off' makes it sound like something we NEED to do, rather than something that is being forced on us by anti-consumer platform owners who simply want to ensure they get maximum revenue from every game sold.

I don't see it that way. Physical means 1) printing and 2) transporting physical goods at cost, financial and environmental. You don't know how many to print so either don't print enough and people go without, or, more likely, print too many and then have a polycarbonate disc that's going to hang around forever as there's no way to recycle.

I consider physical outdated. A clean future will be renewable electricity driving downloads with no waste, and at some point, if humanity lives to then, that's what we'll have. We have to start that some time; now is as good a time as ever.

 

[cheapchips]

I wonder if their new controller auto switches to being directly cloud connected if you're streaming to your Xbox. That'd be a neat latency reducing feature.

 

[see colon]

While that's true. You can still preload/download games, even if you don't own a digital license, through the Xbox mobile app.

This is one of my favorite things about Xbox. You can install a game that you don't own a digital license for, and have a disc that's damaged so much that it can't install the data from it, but the license still can be read, and still play the game.

 

[Seanspeed]

I don't see it that way. Physical means 1) printing and 2) transporting physical goods at cost, financial and environmental. You don't know how many to print so either don't print enough and people go without, or, more likely, print too many and then have a polycarbonate disc that's going to hang around forever as there's no way to recycle.

I consider physical outdated. A clean future will be renewable electricity driving downloads with no waste, and at some point, if humanity lives to then, that's what we'll have. We have to start that some time; now is as good a time as ever.

You cant possibly think that their reasoning has anything to do with the environment, right?

As for your own feelings, this is genuinely a tiny drop in the bucket of what we have to be worrying about with plastics and waste and whatnot. Games are hardly disposable products, ya know? Perhaps you should get rid of any decent PC equipment you've got and push for a cloud-only future for high demand processing too, eh? Or instead, maybe we should just straight up put a ban on any consumer PC or computing device that uses more than 150w all together? Lots of ways to handle this if you're actually serious about this and care about energy and waste and all that so much.

Physical isn't outdated. Just cuz it doesn't interest you as much nowadays shouldn't be an argument for why everybody else should have to give up their clearly FAR more pro-consumer medium for buying games. Until there's a more competitive market for buying digital console games, or until there's a way to trade/sell used digital titles(never gonna happen, let's be real), I think physical should stick around as long as possible.

 

[cheapchips]

Games are hardly disposable products

Games are almost entirely disposable, like all entertainment. If you totted up all the player time for single player games today, fast forwarded a year, hardly any of that playtime would be on the same games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You cant possibly think that their reasoning has anything to do with the environment, right?

Considering a large party of their internal meant to only be seen by MS executives regards sustainability (lower energy use, increased use of recycled materials which are generally more expensive to use than non-recycled materials, move to 100% recyclable packaging, etc.) why wouldn't it be? Can it also be used for future marketing? Sure. Does that mean they aren't conscious of the environment? No.

I mean this is the company that has been experimenting with submerged data centers to reduce their impact on the environment. Why not consoles also?

Regards,
SB

 

[Seanspeed]

Games are almost entirely disposable, like all entertainment. If you totted up all the player time for single player games today, fast forwarded a year, hardly any of that playtime would be on the same games.

That is clearly not what I meant by this and I think you know that perfectly well. When I talk of a disposable product, I mean something you physically get one use out of and then throw it away. That's not what anybody does with physical games. Nobody does that. It may occupy space on a shelf going unused for years, but it's not a disposable product and doesn't come remotely close to the real problem we have with plastics and whatnot, which is mostly about actual disposable products.

Considering a large party of their internal meant to only be seen by MS executives regards sustainability (lower energy use, increased use of recycled materials which are generally more expensive to use than non-recycled materials, move to 100% recyclable packaging, etc.) why wouldn't it be? Can it also be used for future marketing? Sure. Does that mean they aren't conscious of the environment? No.

I mean this is the company that has been experimenting with submerged data centers to reduce their impact on the environment. Why not consoles also?

Regards,
SB

If they really cared about the environment to such a great degree, they wouldn't be making a 200w console at all. Instead, they'd make like a 15w sort of low power device, wouldn't they?

Come on guys, I feel like y'all are either being super naive or just being argumentative. Yes, companies like MS will play lip service to environmentalism and will find some small ways to pretend they're doing good for the world. It's better than nothing, but something like getting rid of physical media would not make a dent at all into the real problems whatsoever. It is completely insignificant in the face of everything else going on that they are directly contributing to.

It's simply a super weak argument for getting rid of physical. One that simply hurts consumers and wouldn't actually help the environment in any meaningful way.

 

[cheapchips]

That is clearly not what I meant by this and I think you know that perfectly well. When I talk of a disposable product, I mean something you physically get one use out of and then throw it away. That's not what anybody does with physical games. Nobody does that. It may occupy space on a shelf going unused for years, but it's not a disposable product and doesn't come remotely close to the real problem we have with plastics and whatnot, which is mostly about actual disposable products.

I wasnt trying to misattributed something to your use of disposable. To me the literal shelf life of jewel cases is irrelevant, it's still land fill in the end. It doesn't make a difference that it takes years to reach the dump.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I've thrown away lots of physical games. I don't have a hoarding problem.

 

[cheapchips]

I've thrown away lots of physical games. I don't have a hoarding problem.

It's not about you, it's about aggregated behaviour.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's not about you, it's about aggregated behaviour.

Absolutely. But I know I am not alone. There will always be a niche collector market and there will probably be some effort to reach that market even with the move to all digital. NFTs coming soon from a publisher near you.

 

[eastmen]

I assume large supermarkets elsewhere in the world are the similar to the uk, and have a large entertainment section. When I was shopping last night, it was a bit weird passing big Xbox section and think 'that's not going to be there in 5 yrs'.

I then walk past the dvds, so who knows.

People serious about game preservation and ownership need another campaign beyond lamenting the death of physical media. Reality is it died in gen8, it just keeps spluttering on for a bit.

Here in the USA I don't know a single supermarket on the east coast that has video games. Piggly wiggly , publix, shoprite , stop and shop, wegmans , whole foods , acme and so on, I have haven't seen video games or consoles in at least 2 decades.

Even the hybrid stores like target and walmart have continued to decrease the size of their movie/games sections. Each console used to have its own aisle and now they share two but also have pc taking up more space in those aisles. Even the bluray/dvd section is just a few smaller aisles and has to be a quarter of the size it was just 5 years ago.

Physical is in a death spiral

 

[Seanspeed]

I wasnt trying to misattributed something to your use of disposable. To me the literal shelf life of jewel cases is irrelevant, it's still land fill in the end. It doesn't make a difference that it takes years to reach the dump.

It's not irrelevant when it comes to the actual scale of the problem of waste, if that's a serious issue for you. It simply doesn't even register on the scale of actual wasteful, disposable plastics that we use on a daily basis. THAT is the main problem.

It truly feels like y'all are just looking for extra arguments to justify a position rather than really, genuinely, thinking it's an important factor in things. If y'all really cared that deeply about the environment that this was some huge issue, you wouldn't even be on this board to begin with, cuz you'd be disgusted with the idea of like 400-500w+ PC's and whatnot in the first place, but I've never once seen any one of you complain about that, but somehow I'm expected to believe y'all are now just a bunch of serious environmentalists. lol Dont think so.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Most of this environmental stuff is nonsense IMO, but that doesn't change the fact that digital is the wave of the future.

When AAA games cost $300 million (1000% increase in 20 years) to develop and the console market has only expanded by 100% in the last 20 years we can thank digital delivery and mtx for why AAA games aren't $120 at retail right now.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If they really cared about the environment to such a great degree, they wouldn't be making a 200w console at all. Instead, they'd make like a 15w sort of low power device, wouldn't they?

Well, sure, they could if they didn't want to make a console as a 15w console would not be able to compete and thus would fail in the market. I suppose that would be great for the environment if MS were no longer making a console, but they do want to make money. And making money and trying to do what you can for the environment are not mutually exclusive.

People and companies are not absolutists. Do we see true believer envronmentalists choosing to never use an air conditioner (well, I don't even when it's 100+ degrees outside. ), hair dryers, escalators/elevators, walk and bike (non-electric) instead of using motorized transportation, etc.? No, because they've chosen to make some compromises in order for their daily life to still be comfortable.

A company can care about the environment while not committing business suicide. Life is not all about either you 100% do something for a thing or you don't care about that thing.

Is an electric car better for the environment than a petrol car? Well sure (assuming you drive it enough that you've paid off the battery debt) but it's still not great for the environment. So, does someone choosing to drive an electric car instead of a petrol car not care for the environment?

Regards,
SB