This may come as a shock to you, but most gamers don’t go online to talk about video games. Most don’t care about having the absolute most power. Most casually play games like COD/FIFA/fortnight/Apex legends/GTA5 etc. Gaming isn’t a big part of their lives nor is it part of their identity. It’s just something they do when they got a few hours to kill. 

Core gamers number the least millions of a console consumer base. We are the “whales” of the industry but are far from the majority. We just have our voices heard the loudest because we actively participate in discussion and outreach to the devs. 

If these people just want to play next gen games without the bells and whistles that say the Series X provides, then more power to them. So long as core gamers like me get the Series X I could care less. 

Well if the scenario did happen, people would consider PS5AD if the price is right. With that said, a few million X1SAD units were probably sold at $149. I even think a Series S could outsell the Series X.

It's really a debate on whether people like all digital. It's more about the price being acceptable for a console going that route. This is also an era where that's becoming viable given the move to digital media.

I remember praising Sony for their handling of games in 2013. Now I don't want physical games for various reasons, mostly from the content on the disc often being useless or inferior.

Right now we think PS5 is going to be over $399. If so, a 4TF PS5AD would be a hot item at $299. Like I said in a previous post, that would still be a huge upgrade over PS4 and Pro.

Sure some people would consider PS5AD, same as some bought X1SAD (seem like when on sale it done strong numbers). But it wouldn't be praised in VGC in general, that is the point I made for PSP Go not being praised. Sure from Sony POV (and MS) an option for PS5 and XSX full digital (or lockhart) would be good as for let's say 50 less (we know the drive don't cost this much but making the console full digital would give more money long term) but Lockhart only being full digital would be a little bad for the entry level people (well if they could have 350 SAD and 400 with drive ok).

I'm all in for allowing people to pay less money for lesser HW if that HW meets their needs. Everyone would win in the scenario. My concern on Lockhart is how much that would impact 3rd party multiplats that I may want to play, but that isn't a big concern anyway since most time I'm playing exclusives and I expect Sony to do great next gen.

If PS5 is $450-$500. People would gladly welcome a $300 lower end, digital only PS5 console. I would likely buy that as my secondary console for exclusives.

The problem with PSP Go is I don't recall it being cheaper and notable content was missing from the digital store. These details matter. You know why Vita TV sucked? It didn't play all Vita games, which includes numerous 1st party games. Not even physical cart support could help that blunder.

Lockhart shouldn't be a burden for multiplats if all the specs are virtually the same as Series X, except GPU. Most multiplat games are designed for PC as well, so these games are already designed to scale for GPU capabilities. Whether it be resolution, performance, graphics settings, etc. Games even designed for ray tracing can have it disabled.

Yes I know they would welcome, but they would also welcome the 350 version of this low end with drive.

PSP Go had a lot of issues, and yes the memory stick was quite expensive for something that would be mandatory. PS TV is another good concept very badly implemented.

It can be a burden depending on devs decision, but I agree with you it shouldn't be a major problem.

True. Doesn't matter the price. If Series S will only have a disc-less SKU, it is a console doomed from the start. It just won't sell. And the interesting part is that Microsoft also knows this because One S with drive was still the best selling Xbox One SKU last year. The only reason why SAD edition had some good sales in holiday season is because it was almost free at that time. 100-150$. People were only buying it as a GamePass console. Series S won't be less than 300$. The higher the price, the harder it is to sell digital only console. So, it would sell even worse that One S SAD did which would put it's existence in question. Because it would definitely sell way worse than Series X will.

I know that myself as a collector and physical person I wouldn't buy the console. But yes a 100 USD to use as platform for streaming have more chance of success.

We could debate on what a "core" gamer is, but to me it's anyone who plays the latest AAA games like GTA, COD etc. Maybe not everyone cares or understands anything about the technical specs, but even my 90-year-old granny understands the concept of you get what you pay for. People will automatically assume there's a reason why it's cheaper and that they'll get a compromised version of GTA6 compared to their buddy's on ps5. Truth is we live in a world where teenagers carry $1000 phones with them and nobody knows or cares what kind of hardware is in them. So is $99 really going to make that much of a difference? We also know that the masses are fine with paying at least $399 for a console, so why make it $299?

The only thing that can come from this is that Series X will be an even harder sell. For the first 2 years MS exclusives on Series X will be hold back by going cross-gen with the Xone. And the remainder of the console generation it will be hold back by Series S's gpu that's 3 times weaker. I just don't see how developers could really make good use of something like Ray Tracing if they constantly have to think "Will this work on 4Tflops too?" 

I get why people might think the Series X will be native 4k and Series S will be 1080p. But ask anyone who knows anything about game design and they'll tell you that resolution will have the least priority with a next gen console. Just look at how many games are 720p on Xone. If the only difference between Series X and S will be that it runs the same games at 4 times the resolution (which most people will barely notice), it just means the developers did a crappy job because it could have been 4 times the overall visual fidelity.  

I don't necessarily think that either, but I and quite a few others didn't think XB1SAD was a great idea, yet MS launched it. If the device needed to take some of the brunt of the workload, a cheaper smaller console, made using the most up to date hardware, would make sense. That doesn't mean old XB1 hardware definitely can't make use of xCloud.

I understand the TF performance between archs. I understand that Lockhart as rumored would take the place of XB1X. In which case keeping XB1X on the market makes no sense. In order for it to remain on the market and make sense though, Lockhart would have to be different than what the leaks suggest. I was just making the case as to how it could potentially remain, based on posts about what may happen to it. I don't necessarily think that's going to be the case, as I mentioned earlier.

It's possible all XB1 hardware or newer will be capable of xCloud streaming, but it's also possible that the XB Series hardware will offer you a more reasonable experience and for cheaper. Streaming only on old hardware vs hardware assisted streaming with newer, better integrated hardware, would likely be a worthy selling point. I thought you said XB hardware earlier but you said X1 hardware, which wouldn't include XBSX. My mistake.

The X1SAD made sense if it was simply $149, most seemed unhappy with the launch price. A device dedicated to xCloud in comparison might cost $99 bundled with a controller. At that rate, a X1SAD is a better choice.

I'm not sure how hardware assisted streaming works better. I mean having used PS Now, it seems to work great as long as your internet connection is up for the task and wired in to reduce latency. I think hardware assisted streaming is more beneficial when streaming your gameplay out, like for people to watch or maybe to another device. I believe Wii U had unique hardware to seamlessly stream video to the tablet controller.