One of the biggest things we learned last year when Microsoft battled with the FTC over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard King was that the former was at one point planning to launch a discless Xbox Series X in late 2024. about it. Add in the fact that Microsoft shut it down. With many of the studios responsible for bringing games to brick-and-mortar stores shutting down earlier this year, many were understandably worried that the company would go all-digital. Fortunately, there’s no need to worry yet.
Stephen Totilo had the chance to speak with Microsoft Head of Games Phil Spencer during last weekend’s DICE Awards, and was told that Xbox has no plans to leave physical media behind for the foreseeable future. With most purchases going digital these days, Spencer says of his company’s strategy: “It doesn’t matter if people move all digitally and get rid of physical things. That’s not strategic for us.”
Totilo also took the opportunity to ask about the possibility of releasing a new discless Xbox series in the future. Even if Spencer’s response was pretty vague, it definitely sounds like the new Xbox Series X or mid-gen upgrades won’t have the feature. Disk drive:
We ship games physically and digitally, and we’re really just following customer behavior. I think our job in running Xbox is to deliver what the majority of our customers want. And now the vast majority of our customers buy their games digitally (…) Game consoles themselves have become, in some ways, the last consumer electronics with a drive, and there are only as many manufacturers. This is a serious problem even considering that you are actually building the drive and the costs associated with it. And when we think about the gear we put in our consoles, there are fewer suppliers and fewer buyers, so the cost of the drive certainly comes into play. ”
That makes a lot of sense, even though in recent years we’ve seen several examples of why an all-digital future will confuse us. What needs to change to completely abandon physical media?
