| SvennoJ said: That would be a shame (no more disc drive). There are still many parts of the world with limited internet and even though my internet is fine, the lower storage this gen has only made physical releases more important to me. Plus I use the consoles as (4k) blu-ray players as well. If the Series S had a disc drive I would have snapped one up for my home theater (1080p projector). |
I suspect that the optical drive will stick around for the Series X for a while, as losing it wouldn't let them shrink the console enough, nor drop the price enough, to come up with a compelling option. Sony only manages it by selling the PS5 Digital at a loss.
However, for those exact same reasons, a Series S *with* an optical drive makes a lot of sense. If and when they can cost-reduce the Series S to $250 USD or less, a $299.99 Series S with a BD drive could be compelling for some people (especially people who are fine to go digital now, but have huge collections of physical OG Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games that they'd want to run on their new Xbox Series console). I'd actually love to see a Series S with an optical drive and a Series X without one. Maybe a Series S Disc, and a Series X Disc-less, would be all we'd need as in-between options. If we presume we won't see any new systems until some future point where Microsoft has caught up with initial demand, so 2023 at the earliest, perhaps we'd be looking at:
$249 Series S Disc-less
$299 Series S Disc
$499 Series X Disc-less
$549 Series X Disc
$599 Series X Disc special editions
That sounds like a lot of SKUs until you consider how many SKUs Microsoft has tended to have in the past. Remember when you had the HDD-less Xbox 360, then the basic Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 Elite, plus special editions? And later on, variations with and without Kinect?
Then on with the Xbox One we had 512 GB, 1TB, 2TB, and Hybrid Drive variants (anyone remember THAT crazy model?!), plus special editions, and that was all before we had the One S and One X and their variants. No way is my suggestion crazier than what Microsoft has actually done in the past. :)
If you really wanted fewer SKUs, you could get rid of the standard Series X Disc and only have:
$249 Series S Disc-less
$299 Series S Disc
$499 Series X Disc-less
$599 Series X Disc special editions
