Report: Next Xbox Won't Have Disc Drive

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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You got to love unnamed sources and rumors simply because it’s usually pans out to be true. This rumor comes from a Microsoft partner who has learned that the new Xbox 720 (or whatever name lands on it) will be disc drive free and a launch date of 2013 to be announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June. NDA? What NDA? :D

The elimination of physical disc media for a platform as huge as the Xbox would be an enormous symbol of how digital content is the future, and anything you have to go to the store to buy is becoming a relic.
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Hmmm I am not sure how I feel about it. For games I am fine with this decision, but at the same time it be nice to have a Blu Ray drive in it as I have a pretty big collection and wouldnt mine getting rid of one device under my TV.
 
The 200GB cap on my Internet service does not like this news. Steam by itself can keep me near the cap most months.
 
jamesrb said:
The 200GB cap on my Internet service does not like this news. Steam by itself can keep me near the cap most months.
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I have always wondered when they were finally gonna raise some of these caps, mine is set to 250 with Comcrap.
 
I like digital distribution, but knowing Microsoft, I could see these two huge cons possibly occurring:

1. Required to stay connected to the internet to play the games (as a form of DRM), thus if the internet is out then say goodbye to gaming.

2. Will probably require Xbox Live Gold Membership to download games (mandatory $60/year, maybe more if they decide to raise the price due to the all internet based console).

I really would like a complete move to digital distribution, but the two factors that will continue to perform a complete move is the bandwidth cap on multiple ISP's and the lack of high-speed internet to certain consumers (yes, this still does exist).
 
I'd take this with a grain of salt. Microsoft would kill itself on sales if they did away with the Disc drive.
The problem with no disc drive is that some people don't have that great of Internet Speeds to begin with. Look at what the telcos and cable giants do to small communities. Broadband? What's that? We'll define the standard at 768kb for you. Oh you want to get Fallout 4? You won't be done downloading it till next week. On top of that Microsoft will miss out on sales from people that go out to shop. Oh cool the new Fallout 4 is on the PS4. I'll get that and won't have to mess around with downloading the game.
Microsoft is headed for big problems if they try to pull this.
 
soulman901 said:
I'd take this with a grain of salt. Microsoft would kill itself on sales if they did away with the Disc drive.
The problem with no disc drive is that some people don't have that great of Internet Speeds to begin with. Look at what the telcos and cable giants do to small communities. Broadband? What's that? We'll define the standard at 768kb for you. Oh you want to get Fallout 4? You won't be done downloading it till next week. On top of that Microsoft will miss out on sales from people that go out to shop. Oh cool the new Fallout 4 is on the PS4. I'll get that and won't have to mess around with downloading the game.
Microsoft is headed for big problems if they try to pull this.
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SD cards are cheap. It's possible that the purchaser can either by it on LIVE or buy it via store which might be some proprietary flash memory format.
 
soulman901 said:
I'd take this with a grain of salt. Microsoft would kill itself on sales if they did away with the Disc drive.
The problem with no disc drive is that some people don't have that great of Internet Speeds to begin with. Look at what the telcos and cable giants do to small communities. Broadband? What's that? We'll define the standard at 768kb for you. Oh you want to get Fallout 4? You won't be done downloading it till next week. On top of that Microsoft will miss out on sales from people that go out to shop. Oh cool the new Fallout 4 is on the PS4. I'll get that and won't have to mess around with downloading the game.
Microsoft is headed for big problems if they try to pull this.
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Wait I went and read the article. What was mentioned and what Majordomo forgot to mention is that the games would exist on a different type of media, solid state in this case.
 
this may increase piracy in countries where people already take thier console to a gaming shop to install pirated games, not to mention the very low download cap and speed they have.
 
Sounds pretty preumptious for Microsoft. The reason why discs work so well is that discs are the cheapest way to distribute data offline. For those without a high speed internet connection are they gonna have game kiosks ala the old Nintendo FDS system to distribute games? Also What happens when the Hard drive is full and you want to get more games? It's not like we can simply swap HDs for a bigger library.
 
I think the design will be modular such that the disc drive can be replaced with another hard drive to increase storage space, but the idea of having no drive at all, while ideal, just isn't realistic in this day and age. The average broadband speed in the US is ~6Mbps, meaning a 14GB game would take 6 hours if you maxed out the connection. Compare that to the 30 minutes it takes to buy a brand new game from the store and you can see why just relying on such a system is silly.

I do predict we'll see a hybrid approach similar to what the Vita has now: an option to buy games digitally for a few bucks less or buy them at retail, and every game will be available digitally from day one. Trying to change that formula too significantly is just prone to headaches for Microsoft.
 
Not sure why people are so skeptical considering Steam has been doing digital distribution for years.
 
I could see an option for a system without a disc drive, but to not have one at all?

Bandwidth cap from my ISP(no, I shouldn't have to pay a premium for a business class connection to download games)

Download times. It takes 30 minutes or less to get a game at a store, now I have to spend a few hours download it, while using up bandwidth for anything else I might have been downloading.

Hard drive failure. They fail. That's going to be fun 3 years after I buy it and it's out of warranty so now I have to download 300GB of games again after buying a new system, instead of just buying a new system.

Server outages. New game launch? Too bad, server's down can't get it.

ISP outages. Hmm, can't watch videos online, might as well go play a game oh... can't. This one's only a problem is MS requires connectivity to play.

They obviously don't care about the used game market, so mentioning gamestop, ebay, giving an old game to a friend, etc. is pointless.
 
It's so painfully obvious what MS is doing for anyone that's been paying attention. They're going to come out with two consoles, one will be a more casual DD only box that is small, cool, and quiet. It may or may not come with kinect in the box. It will be the console for casual "pet the kitty games" that can easily be downloaded by most everybody. The other will be the core console, it will be big, expensive (I'm guessing $500 after seeing how well the ipad sells), and noisy.
 
Merc1138 said:
I could see an option for a system without a disc drive, but to not have one at all?

Bandwidth cap from my ISP(no, I shouldn't have to pay a premium for a business class connection to download games)

Download times. It takes 30 minutes or less to get a game at a store, now I have to spend a few hours download it, while using up bandwidth for anything else I might have been downloading.

Hard drive failure. They fail. That's going to be fun 3 years after I buy it and it's out of warranty so now I have to download 300GB of games again after buying a new system, instead of just buying a new system.

Server outages. New game launch? Too bad, server's down can't get it.

ISP outages. Hmm, can't watch videos online, might as well go play a game oh... can't. This one's only a problem is MS requires connectivity to play.

They obviously don't care about the used game market, so mentioning gamestop, ebay, giving an old game to a friend, etc. is pointless.
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Even though I don't think MS will release a disk driveless core console, some of those points are dumb. First of all, the lowest cap I know of is ATT's 150GB cap, average game is 10-15GB, so exactly how many games are you buying a month? I'll put it this way, if you're buying that many games, I don't think $10/50GB overage charge is going to kill you.

Having to wait for the download. Ever hear of preloading? Gets the game faster than if you had to drive and get it.

HDD failure. Sure they fail every once in a while, but why would you be downloading all of your games again at the same time? Are you playing them all every day? Certainly you might want to replay them someday, but not all of them at the same time, conveniently after the HDD crashed.

Server outages? Really? How many times has XBL been down over since it's inception, and how many of those were scheduled?

Why would MS require connectivity to play? You realize that's only in place on PC because of how easy it is to pirate. No need for such a system on consoles.

And yea, you're right, they don't care about used games. Used games are just as bad as piracy, actually even worse as someone buying a used game is a 100% verifiable lost sale, not so with piracy. So, as soon as used games die, the better.
 
with how cheap flash media is, anyone else thinking digital copies pre-loaded onto MS specific flash cards for those that dont have decent internet?
 
I can see the whole DLC direction with Xbox.

I dont use my 360 much what games I have picked up I downloaded.

Still I find the lack of a built in blue-ray to be a whole lot more the just silly.

Like many I dont have a DVD player because that is a function of my Xbox.

No doubt you will be able to buy, at a high cost, the Xbox 720 USB Blue Ray Kit (required remote available at extra charge).

I am predicting now, a class action suite (with award to the consumers), for somehow making the system not able to use generic external optical drives despite the Xbox OS being a stripped down windows.
 
it seems truly unrealistic that Microsoft would lock itself out of the offline, single-player market.

And what about the family going on holiday to a location without internet contract, like seaside home, or self-catering?
 
Spidey329 said:
SD cards are cheap. It's possible that the purchaser can either by it on LIVE or buy it via store which might be some proprietary flash memory format.
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That is what I was thinking. They already offer MS branded 8gb USB sticks.
 
Ryan711 said:
First of all, the lowest cap I know of is ATT's 150GB cap, average game is 10-15GB, so exactly how many games are you buying a month? I'll put it this way, if you're buying that many games, I don't think $10/50GB overage charge is going to kill you.
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Given that gaming is the only thing you do with your internet connection. Paying extra per month if you go beyond you cap doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

HDD failure. Sure they fail every once in a while, but why would you be downloading all of your games again at the same time? Are you playing them all every day? Certainly you might want to replay them someday, but not all of them at the same time, conveniently after the HDD crashed.
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Nobody likes losing all the stuff they bought because of some Chinese made crap fails on you. The only way this would fly is if you can download all your games again. Like Steam.

Why would MS require connectivity to play? You realize that's only in place on PC because of how easy it is to pirate. No need for such a system on consoles.
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Just wait and see what happens when people hack the Xbox 720. They'll enforce it.
And yea, you're right, they don't care about used games. Used games are just as bad as piracy, actually even worse as someone buying a used game is a 100% verifiable lost sale, not so with piracy. So, as soon as used games die, the better.
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There was a ruling recently that people can in fact sell their mp3's. I would assume that reselling downloaded games would also be legal, given there was any legal way of removing the game from your Xbox Live account.

Also, used game sales aren't piracy. It's perfectly legal to do so. Just companies put more weight on loss then gains nowadays.
 
djoye said:
Cartridge gaming returns, ahhh. Less noise, less loading.
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this, i think everybody assumes digital distribution is where they are going, but with flash memory being so fast and cheap now...who's to say they don't start selling cartridges again?
 
nobody_here said:
this, i think everybody assumes digital distribution is where they are going, but with flash memory being so fast and cheap now...who's to say they don't start selling cartridges again?
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*waits to see the R7i Gold for Xbox 720 come around*
 
I was hoping Microsoft would put Blu-ray in the 720 so I can upgrade from my PS3 and use the Xbox as a Media Center extender, but I guess not.

If they're putting games on SD cards, that'd be awesome seeing how it's much faster than optical drives and you can probably save your games on it. But if they're going fully digital downloadable contents, they can forget it. ISPs' caps are too low for digital distribution.
 
They are doing this because the Origin/Steam model makes a ton of money for the developers. There is also no 2nd hand sales which again puts more cash in the developers hands. While this may crush gamestop and its ilk...it might cause a ton of new game companies to open up because their odds of success are much higher.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
Upgrade to business class. No cap. There is a bit of a premium though.
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That doesnt work for everyone... CableOne charges overage if you go past 50gb & there business plans still have caps unless you can afford 230 a month just for internet.
 
I think selling a console with an optical drive would be a fatal error *at this time*

People like physical media and the more expensive it is more so.
 
dangerouseddy said:
optical media is really cheap. some flash media instead would add considerably to the game price imho.
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i would think a 16gb flash memory card would only cost about $2 oem right? i know theyre still like $10 on sale, but i doubt its anywhere near that cost to manufacture them.
 
Damn my first thought when I read it was disc drive = hard disc drive.. but you need that to have digital content so meh.
 
While I doubt this is true as it would be a completely boneheaded move, if it turns out it is I will not be buying the next Xbox.
 
Ryan711 said:
Even though I don't think MS will release a disk driveless core console, some of those points are dumb. First of all, the lowest cap I know of is ATT's 150GB cap, average game is 10-15GB, so exactly how many games are you buying a month? I'll put it this way, if you're buying that many games, I don't think $10/50GB overage charge is going to kill you.
.
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Wow, so much fail.

Even at a 150GB cap per month, that doesn't mean you're buying 10 15GB games a month to hit the cap. Plenty of people already sit just below their caps(I average 220GB a month on comcast with their 250GB) cap, and having to download an extra 45GB a month would start putting users over their cap. That's the problem.

Or were you just too dumb to realize that no one is getting a separate broadband connection just for their console?

Janic said:
And discs can scratch.
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When a disc gets scratched, in some instances it can be polished out. Discs also don't get scratched just because they've been used. A disc scratch does not compare to a hard drive failure.

Some of you guys are either clueless, or just really reaching to try and defend your favorite console manufacturer.
 
get AT&T to raise to a reasonable cap of 500GB or so a month and then I wouldn't care.

Netflix, Steam, Xbox720?, torrents, + large project files for work? and I'm supposed to do all this in under 150GB (both upload and download combined) a month?


fark you AT&T - and to any company who thinks I should pay 150 dollars a month for bandwidth that the rest of the world enjoys for pennies.
 
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