Global Hardware 18 May 2019

[Bofferbrauer2]

RolStoppable said:

COKTOE said:

I'm going to address this SAD situation one more time before moving on: Terrible execution. A lower price should have been THE hook for that particular SKU and it's not difficult at all to find the undeniably superior XBO-S for less than the SAD. The 3 digital pack-in games are all on Game Pass....outstanding. And that name. That name and the acronym that accompanies it. Did nobody at Xbox catch this? SAD has become the defacto way of referring to it. Not just on gaming forums, but by youtube content creators, and even the gaming press.

It exactly happened how it was explained: Removing the disc drive won't reduce the retail price because any retailer with a brain will demand a hefty profit margin to put it on shelves, because no customer will buy physical games for such an SKU.

It's an idea that cannot be executed well. If Microsoft gifted the SKU to retailers, it would be available for a lower price than other SKUs, but that in turn makes it a financial nightmare for Microsoft. It's an idea where always at least one of the involved parties (console manufacturer, retailer, customer) gets screwed over, unlike the regular way of selling a console where it's possible for all parties to be winners.

If an all digital console is supposed to take off, they'll have to do it like with smartphones: selling them for 1$/€ to retailers and earning through the digital sales.

At the same time, they will have to set the retail price somewhere north of $99 so the retailers will at least win enough from that sale that they could be persuaded to stock the item.