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Xbox Series X (coming 10 Nov 2020)
- Thread starter gkarris
- Start date
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Losing the disc drive is terrible. There is some titles that I am happy to buy, play once, sell and never play again.
Furthermore i can buy 3-7 year old titles used for £3-5. In the xbox stores, some of them like capcom titles are £20-30.
The end of discs only benefits MS in pushing both consumers and developers towards gamepass.
Based on the article linked it looks like MS is steadily marching towards xCloud being where games are played. The next console mentioned forwards compatibility, but I am unsure if it meant backwards compatibility.
Agree. The future of gaming for X is Stadia but by Microsoft. Low barriers to participation for consumer: e.g wifi enabled xbox controller + subscription.
Yup, to be honest I am actually surprised they are thinking about doing another console. I figured they would fully pivot to the cloud for gaming.
I will be a phased and gradual process.
From:
full game purchases and physical consoles.
To:
always connected freemium cloud-based games"apps" with in-app purchases.
In all fairness, many studios that make games have already started transitioning to make console titles that are more similar to mobile games. It's hard to resist the freemium always-connected model when candy crush, genshin impact and cod mobile generate billions in revenue annually.
These days I can't open a new game without getting dazed by a home screen full of:
Events
Seasons
Skins
Chests
Daily login rewards
Useless points rewards.
I wonder what the future holds for physical PS5/XSX games.
Technically we don't own them. 99% of the time, when you put in the disc, the game has to be downloaded from the cloud. How long will the digital copies exist in the cloud?
A good example is Forza horizon 2. You can no longer buy a digital copy but you can buy a used disc copy. However 60% of the cars are in-app purchases..........which are no longer shoppable in the Xbox store. This might never change as the licenses for the branded cars and circuits have expired.
Basically there is a risk that some of today's games are abondware.
Considering 360/PS3 game updates are still around and available hopefully at least another 10-15 years after the death of the machines. We still haven't heard any rumblings about Sony or MS taking down the update servers for those despite posting about closing (or unclosing) the digital stores. Hopefully by the time that happens we at least get some sort of usable jailbreak for XSX or PS5...
If Microsoft got rid of the disc drive I'd switch to the PS. I need a DVD/Blu-ray/UHD Blu-ray player.
That would be a real shame. At least I bought an external Blu-ray drive for my Mac Studio so I can rip the discs and stream them from my computer.
Microsoft will soon own activation and will likely scrap physical dics for activision, xbox studios and bathesda games from 2025.
Here's engadget's take
Huge leak reveals Microsoft will launch an all-digital Xbox Series X and new gyro controller
Huge leak reveals Microsoft will launch an all-digital Xbox Series X and new gyro controller
It should since they are rumored to release it before the updated systems.
Phew. At least that doesn’t force us to ”upgrade” to the discless series x just to use the new controller.
I read all the leaks today and I’m not impressed, Spencer and MS seriously considered buying Nintendo with Spencer considering it to be a ‘career moment’, thank God they moved on from that!
A cylinder XSX update with no disk drive or seemingly option for one, so digital only and you just know Game Pass will be shoved in you even more..
And a next gen system that will use the cloud for extra power! So poor internet poor console speeds I less functionality I guess, good luck using it offline..
Not impressed at all, all heavily heavily geared towards a digital only future and a cloud based one at that.
’just my own personal opinion’
A cylinder XSX update with no disk drive or seemingly option for one, so digital only and you just know Game Pass will be shoved in you even more..
And a next gen system that will use the cloud for extra power! So poor internet poor console speeds I less functionality I guess, good luck using it offline..
Not impressed at all, all heavily heavily geared towards a digital only future and a cloud based one at that.
’just my own personal opinion’
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Maybe, but I wouldn’t guarantee it, however it will be because the market buys digital more then physical.
Sony’s biggest market is Japan. If physical copies are a big part of the gaming community and hype around release day, then the ps5 refresh will retain a disc drive.
I wish they didn't. My dream is for Nintendo to finally stop being dinosaurs. Nintendo finally doing PC releases, Nintendo no longer treating their fans like dirt, no longer having an awful online service, and just all around being a lot more friendlier and fun. If Microsoft buying them would've been what it would take, then so be it
Alas...it be just a dream. 😥
Sony's biggest market hasn't been Japan for years and even there PS5 physical games are hardly selling. The physical sales charts are dominated by Switch titles there. Sony moved the HQ for Sony Interactive Entertainment (division which does Playstation) from Tokyo to California. We've already heard plenty of rumors about disc-less PS5 slims, maybe the rumored PS5 Pro will retain it but perhaps not.
Please do tell how Nintendo are not ‘fun’? Nintendo does what Nintendo do and it has over ‘100 million’ fans that like the way they do things.
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I agree on losing the disk drive, as I'm a fan of physical media. On the other hand, so many games seem to launch in a broken state and whatever's on the disk is unplayable, so I don't know.
I've bought some third party non-Game Pass games for my Series X, but now I feel like just stopping that alltogether.
Don't lose hope!
Phil Spencer has sent a tweet encouraging us to wait for the real plans.
I think the trash can Series X was an internal pitch that might not become true. The cylinder shape offers no practical benefits over the current tower.
Regarding the disc drive. It might stay. The reason is that backward compatability. In the first two years of the series x, it was pushed as the primary selling point. For game preservation and culture ire fantastic as you can play titles but with the benefit of shorter loading time, higher refresh rate and other improvements.
If the series x lose the disc drive then the backwards compatability ethos falls apart.
Sure you can play older titles on gamepass. But not all of them and it's plausible that gamepass will become more expensive every year. A disc drive is a hedge against that.
Whether the disc drive will be relevant for new titles in 2-3 years will depend on the direction that gaming studios take e.g sell a title for £60 or create a freemium game and generate billions in in-app purchases.
Regarding specs. I won't be surprised if the specs remain same. The ps5 and XSX look the same in most games because for developers it's easier to lock quality mode at 30 and performance at 60 then spending precious man hours on eeking out an extra 5-10fps for either console.
Therefore I don't think it will be worthwhile for Xbox to spend millions on a 10-20% on-paper performance boost.