Xbox Maverick, the Disc-less Xbox One S

[Ali della Fenice]

They have more console revisions than quality games.
Seriously, xbone is worse than the saturn and gamecube in my opinion. Its only saving grace is that it has actual 3rd party support, but thats it.

 

[Done]

The way I see it, what Microsoft is trying to achieve here is:

1. Experiment (again) with killing used games, this time without betting the whole farm on it like they did with the XB1's launch.
2. Push out their existing inventory of XB1 parts, they probably have an incredible amount of parts that aren't selling. Computer parts have a very bad shelf-life, and considering how old the hardware was when the console 1st launched, this has to be a major part in their thinking.
3. Load-up the retailers with something, anything while they work on their new console. Because everyone can see those existing Xboxes aren't selling at all, and retailers won't buy more stock of existing SKUs. (It's the same thinking that drives limited edition consoles and bundles btw, it's to promote Sell-in, rather than Sell-Out)

I personally think it will fail, because:

1. People just won't let go of physical media: They wanna buy used/discounted games and save money, some of them can't afford internet plans to get their shit downloaded, and some people can't get fast enough internet to begin with!
2. Sure, they may be able to push out those parts, but that will only kick the can down the road, because now retailers will want to get discounted prices to push out their own stock, which will cost Microsoft money down the road, in addition to manufacturing, logistics and marketing costs.
3. Well, what buzz can you even create for the 4th version of a dead platform? Who's buying this shit that hasn't bought the existing offerings? I just don't see this even selling any units to begin with, before even going into making sales targets.

TL;DR: This whole project is dumb and should be killed, it could literally be cheaper for Microsoft to write-off whatever stock of parts they have than attempt this..

 

[byuu]

GTAV was one of the last computer games to come in CD, and the box had 16 just for installation.

I wish they'd stop with those 30-40GB games.
As if ridiculously high-res textures make the game more fun.

 

[ObsoleteMediaFormat]

if it's super cheap and got more BC XBOX games, maybe would pick it

 

[Jamesathy]

honestly, i'd be willing to get it because i get all of my games digitally unless it's super imperative i have a physical copy for whatever stupid-as-fuck reason. but the only thing i can think of worth playing on the xbox one is the rare replay in the first place, and since i can just get an og one for pretty cheap, there's no point. i don't understand who will honestly buy this instead of either a used xbox one, or an xbox one x at this point.

to be honest though, the rare replay is a system seller for me, so i'll buy the xbox one at some point.

 

[AlephOne2Many]

I have a 50/50 split of physical and digital games, and I just got the Xbox One X which is automatically a better deal because of physical media. Give or take, the triple compatibility (One, 360, OG Xbox) is great since the ones I own are dead and I sent them in for recycling.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Optical formats that go up to 6TB exist.

Holographic Versatile Disc - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nobody wants to adopt it since "digital is the future".

That's really not the case, these would have been used for archive purposes but we prefer to use other medium for that, such as tape. You can go either 40TB or 100TB. Not only for the storage capacity, but also due to how much damage a disk based storage solution can take before it dies when compared to a tape based solution.

 

[JM 590]

What a weird time to release it. This has got to exist only so they have something to show shareholders before the end of the quarter.

I do have to applaud the brazenness of the attempt, however. Trying to get consumers to pay for the privilege of an inferior option with fewer features has a certain mercenary charm to it.
"Maverick" indeed.

Just like the entire cellphone business these days

RIP headphone jacks, removable batteries, and software that can't just poof disappear from your redownload list when the developer decides to pull it, or the OS gets updated to where it won't run anymore. Just like most iOS games from 5+ years ago.

 

[AlephOne2Many]

What a weird time to release it. This has got to exist only so they have something to show shareholders before the end of the quarter.



Just like the entire cellphone business these days

RIP headphone jacks, removable batteries, and software that can't just poof disappear from your redownload list when the developer decides to pull it, or the OS gets updated to where it won't run anymore. Just like most iOS games from 5+ years ago.

They JUST fixed Marathon 2 for iOS, what a troll length of wait to fix what most of the userbase uninstalled from their dying iPhone 4. :/

 

[sasazuka]

Who's buying this shit that hasn't bought the existing offerings?

I don't have an XBox One and still kind of want to get one eventually (but one of the versions with an optical drive), if just for the Forza games. (I'm still dreaming that Microsoft will somehow bring back Project Gotham Racing, still my favourite XBox franchise.)

I'm a very trailing edge gamer.

 

[JM 590]

They JUST fixed Marathon 2 for iOS, what a troll length of wait to fix what most of the userbase uninstalled from their dying iPhone 4. :/

Glad to hear it, good on Bungie or whomever put through the fix. But then there's...

Bioshock Mobile, which was $15 at launch and sold for less than a year, just to be broken in iOS7 along with many other games. 2K said a fix would come eventually, it never did, it's long since been delisted, and fuck those of us who paid for it

Shadowrun Returns and everything in that series has been completely pulled, even for redownloads

The World Ends With You didn't work for a long time, I think a couple of years, due to the same iOS7 bug as Bioshock. But at least it eventually got a fix

And then there's all sorts of other assorted stuff that's long gone. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 had a good iOS port; Dead Rising had a mobile version that was kinda shit but nevertheless the only portable game in the series; Duke Nukem 3D was alright; and a bunch of Sega games that are slowly getting rereleased under the Sega Ages collection, that run a little shitty when the original release was fine; and speaking of Sega, Jet Set Radio's great port is long gone, too.

Android versions can at least be sideloaded without rooting your phone, but with iOS? You're up a fuckin' creek. Even jailbreaking doesn't help much, considering how many apps end up broken from one version of iOS to another.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Dickless Xbox

True, but that was during a more complicated time of internet wasn't it? Then again, game size has increased because no one knows how to fucking compress anymore... and data caps are very real problem. It certainly doesn't help that discs themselves usually only hold one half of the data these days, right? Hmm... we're supposed to be going forward, but we keep chaining ourselves to heavy objects for some reason.

NIntendo does because they have to.

 

[Zaragoza]

The way I see it, what Microsoft is trying to achieve here is:

1. Experiment (again) with killing used games, this time without betting the whole farm on it like they did with the XB1's launch.
2. Push out their existing inventory of XB1 parts, they probably have an incredible amount of parts that aren't selling. Computer parts have a very bad shelf-life, and considering how old the hardware was when the console 1st launched, this has to be a major part in their thinking.
3. Load-up the retailers with something, anything while they work on their new console. Because everyone can see those existing Xboxes aren't selling at all, and retailers won't buy more stock of existing SKUs. (It's the same thinking that drives limited edition consoles and bundles btw, it's to promote Sell-in, rather than Sell-Out)

I personally think it will fail, because:

1. People just won't let go of physical media: They wanna buy used/discounted games and save money, some of them can't afford internet plans to get their shit downloaded, and some people can't get fast enough internet to begin with!
2. Sure, they may be able to push out those parts, but that will only kick the can down the road, because now retailers will want to get discounted prices to push out their own stock, which will cost Microsoft money down the road, in addition to manufacturing, logistics and marketing costs.
3. Well, what buzz can you even create for the 4th version of a dead platform? Who's buying this shit that hasn't bought the existing offerings? I just don't see this even selling any units to begin with, before even going into making sales targets.

TL;DR: This whole project is dumb and should be killed, it could literally be cheaper for Microsoft to write-off whatever stock of parts they have than attempt this..

Also, why the hell are they getting rid of their CD drive when people who like to play with backwards compatibility aren't going to be able to play their original Xbox and 360 games.

 

[Watcher]

The PSP Go was a great idea 7 years before it's time. If they had made it later, or something like it later, it've sold like hot cakes.

I actually agree with this. At the time I thought the PSP Go was a brilliant idea because I just ended up pirating games on the PSP anyway. The only reason I didn't upgrade to one is because it doesn't support expandable storage which the prior models do (since you can expand them with a third party sd card adapter)

Digital only consoles are going to be a thing retail is dying. It's why Gamestop has been attempting in vein to diversify their business into mobile devices because they see the writing on the wall. Despite a lot of consumer attitudes people seem to only really like retail in the context of used games and collecting. The former has been dying off due to games as a service titles and free to play games and the latter is a niche hobby that isn't really interested in the game itself more so keeping the packaging and getting closer to a complete set. A lot of why people want retail has more to do with sentimental reasons and non-practical ones. It used to be that physical packaging for games was as much of a selling point as the game itself. Such as big box PC titles like Stonekeep which not only had a baller box that was shaped like a tombstone but also contained a tie-in novel that explained a lot of the lore/backstory to the game

You're lucky nowadays to get a box that even contains a manual most of the time it just contains the disk and a paper sleeve or just the disk. And the disk just opens a proprietary launcher and assigns a cd code to your account. And you still have to spend a few hours downloading patches.

There are advantages to retail like it becomes a lot harder for a company to then kill the title and prevent you from playing it. Albeit not impossible as many always online games were originally sold at retail.

 

[Fuzhou]

I wish they'd stop with those 30-40GB games.

It's only gonna get worse for size. Although some games actually feel the size they are now. Like Red Dead 2 feels like a 100GB game.

It's why Gamestop has been attempting in vein to diversify their business into mobile devices because they see the writing on the wall.

In my mind, I think that we'll never see the end of Physical Media, too many collectors exist (like myself) to not milk with $150 collectors editions. But I think next gen is gonna launch (both MS and Sony, since Sony will have heard about MS doing this long enough in advance to clone) with both a disk and diskless model, with a price gap to compensate.

I don't think the future of these consoles will be all diskless however, Vinyl died hard in the 90's, but it came back and almost every single new album gets a Vinyl printing now. DVD's and Blu-Rays are in the same boat imo.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I don't think we'll ever get rid of physical media on consoles, not anytime soon at least.

They don't exactly have "game streaming" figured out, it's "ok" but it certainly isn't good and really can't be (because of the created latency) - it's hard enough for most people to stream games over their home networks (Steamlink, Nvidia shield, PSRemotePlay, etc).

The consoles aren't nearly ready to move off of discless media. There's been a huge push for backwards compatibility that Microsoft has been trying to milk for a while and you can't really do that without a disc tray (I mean, you can, but not in a way the consumer would give a shit about). Backwards compatibility is tremendous when a new console launches and I don't think that Sony will just cede that ground to Microsoft. There's rumors that the Playstation 5 will have full backwards compatibility with all other PS models (1 through 4). Microsoft would be insane to realease the XBOX 2 (or whatever) without backwards compatibility because they will not have a strong launch library.

Even if I'm wrong about backwards compatibility, most people's home internet is not up to the task. Most places have data caps and most areas do not have gigabit speeds, or even speeds approaching gigabit. This isn't going to change in the near future because of how America treats ISPs (they basically have local monopolies and rarely upgrade infrastructure). Even in areas where internet is above average, 500GB/1TB hard drives are not exceptionally large compared to 50GB/100GB game installs. Most people will eventually own more than 10 games and it becomes a huge hassle to shuffle them around the hard drive. It doesn't make a ton of sense to remove a $30 disc drive if you're going to need to eventually get a $60 hard drive down the line. Owning 10 games is even easier now that "freemium" is a new price model. Even if you spend $0 on games you can get into Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Warframe on your XBOX 2 and it doesn't show signs of slowing down.

Lastly, there's no benefit to the consumer and the consumer knows it. Digital is more expensive than physical in nearly 100% of all instances. You can't resell digital, you can't loan digital, you can't rent digital, and you can't trade digital. The only reason digital is even partially a conversation on PC is because of all of the positive strides that Valve has made in that area. They've made the refund process pretty easy for digital, the prices are usually lower on digital, there's no "intrusive" DRM, the library is easy to use, it's easy to share games in a household, etc. Microsoft has made exactly 0 strides for any of their digital services being consumer friendly and the consumer is keenly aware of that.

All that said - it would be hilarious to me if XBOX 2 did not have a disc tray and Microsoft literally repeated all of it's mistakes from the XBOX ONE's disastrous launch (Always online, digitial licenses, no back comp) but doubled down on them harder to a point where they would be irreversible.