The issue at first wasn't the idea of promoting downloading titles or installing disc but because of the checks and essentially calling us all thieves. Now they have 'apologised' for that and done a normal console, they can continue with their ideas. Having 2 SKUs seems a good idea, a digital only at a vastly reduced cost and one with a drive.

The only issue then would be competition on their market place. If it is the only source for which you can buy games, they will fix prices and con customers. No competition is bad for consumers and if games just stay at RRP, while high street stores keep reducing costs on disc versions, more people will just by the drive version or a competitor where there is more freedom to switch or trade.

Oh and they'd have to make it so you can change/upgrade the hard drive. That is a must.

Who would want to save $30 and not have a blu ray drive.

Drop Kinect save people over $100 and sells well as an addon for those that want it later.

I use the blue ray alot on the xbo. Plus with external HD support coming out soon, I'm not too worried about it. I dont think your idea is a good one for them to follow. Of course if your trying to troll again I can not tell this time, I dont see 8MB of ram listed......

PSPgo worked so well....

With no Blu-ray drive they would need 2 HDMI-in ports. because without Blu-ray (and DVD) playback you need to have 3 devices connected to your TV to get the full suite of entertainment: games, Cable TV and physical media. If you can't plug both the cable box and your stand alone blu-ray player in to the Xb one then you no longer have the "all in one box".

I don;t see the original Xb one strategy working even with a discless box. I think the digital distribution only model will be subscription based, just like PS+, Onlive, and PS Now are / will be. Putting the Steam model into Xbox when the subscription model is already well established on Playstation would be a mistake. The Steam model is the past.

And it gives ammo to the faction inside MS that is anti-Xbox. Which I believe is the reason why MS wanted to sell Xb one at a profit from day 1, to keep the naysayers inside MS quiet.

That sounds like a very real possibility. And it's one I would go for.

And this idea that multiple SKU's causes confusion is ridiculous. Last gen proved buyers are smart and will pick the SKU that fits their needs and budget. Not to mention that besides video game consoles, phones, Blu-Ray players, TVs and more all have tons of SKU's from each manufacturer and all the manufacturer's combine.

In other words, having another SKU compliments the buyers intelligence to make informed decisions.

Can anyone tell me if this guy is serious?

1. External HD support will not be able to run games. It is just for storage.
2. It's Bluray, not blueray. You use it a lot? Why not just use it on your ps3? Bluray's are already huge. BR players are cheap, and everyone should have a ps3 by now anyway. PS3 is literally the best console on sale right now. "it only does everything".
3. If I was trolling, you wouldn't know anyway.
4. 8GB, not MB. Obviously the RAM would have to stay, but definitely cut out the motherboard...that things is just a waste of space.

Or an HDMI-in on the bluray drive, which is also a dvr? Just throwing ideas out there.

So you're forced to buy the overpriced Xbox BR drive rather than a cheap BR drive oin order to be able to watch BR movies etc all through the one HDMI port on your TV? doesn't sound like a very good solution. And of course most cable boxes come with DVR, so an Xbox proprietary DVR would seem to have limited utility.

Anyway, aside from reducing the form factor, removing BR drive doesn;t reduce the cost of the Xbox by that much, so you're losing a lot of functionality and having to shoehorn alternative solutions for very little cost saving. If you just remove the BR drive and sell the Xb one for $399 you're still losing money on the hardware.

This would make a lot more sense.  Lets face it most people still don't have access to fast enough internet without any data caps where a driveless console would make sense.  Also with the Kintect being optional MS would actually have to make some decent games for it so that people would be interested in buying it.