Going all digital....

As there's currently no way to resell digital console purchases (legally), this will affect those gamers who are on tight budgets. As digital is still very expensive and takes an age to get proper deals/ discounts. 

On the other hand discs now seem to be a form of DRM as they hold the licence. For example when i upgraded my Cyberpunk2077 PS4 to PS5 and No Mans Sky i have to keep the disc in the drive for the PS5 Version to run. 

Keeping discs in for DRM isn't exactly a new thing though, it's been happening with PC games sold on optical media for decades too

I think the drive removal from the X is a mistake because they may as well scrap the S if they are doing that. It also rules out cross-compatibility with older games players purchased for their X on disc. The other elephant in the room? 2TB storage is still not enough

This is probably another attempt by them to boost Gamepass, which Phil Spencer seems obsessed about. However, I think that they severely underestimate how many people want to own stuff and how many of the console users are very cost-conscious.

XBox is already the runner up console, with a fairly poor reputation outside the US, so they should probably focus more on making it better.

Yeah im not a big fan of going completely digital. Don't get me wrong, it has its benefits such as logging in and being able to download any game you own no matter where you are. But I also love Collectors Editions and old games, it defeats the purpose for me and I think its a bad move at the minute. Ps I still watch Old Blue Rays lol

It's a trap.

At that point you can only buy what they want you to at the price they want you to. Don't like it? Cant even resell it to recoup the cost. Its also trying to strong arm you into gamepass.

I for one only buy what I want to play, when I want to play it. So gamepass holds no value to me. 

Then comes the cloud boosted performance, we all know that will be a digital subscription too. They will not just give you better performance. Also having to depend on an Internet connection is counter productive. Some of us just play games. I dont do subscriptions, which is why I came back to PC, so someone saying pay 15quid a month and you can have 4090 levels of performance, just doesn't sit right with me. Pretty soon you'll be paying 500quid for a glorified modem and still being charged for online, gamepass and cloud services.

Hell no, MS and XB can get screwed.

It was a predictable move and I hate it. The wording on it about being "adorably" all digital was just ugh, too, trying to pass a blatant anti-consumer profit-driven decision as something good.

I stopped buying games on disc for pc around 2013 but on pc you get game bundles and good discounts all around, the amount of great games  you can find for dirt cheap can support an all digital ecosystem, consoles are a different market entirely and sony and microsoft make a ton of profit on rights and licensing fees just so devs and publishers can have the "privilege" of having their games on their platforms, there is an extra middleman that doesn't exist in pc gaming, imagine if microsoft got a cut off every pc game sold or else it wouldn't run on windows.

Anyway to me the main issue is what happens next gen? They may not even have disc versions.

I think it's fine for most people with good internet. It could be better like PC is with multiple game marketplaces though, it's a shame that although the digital versions cost less, the disk versions usually drop in price faster and undercut the cost of the digital versions within a few months of release.

Hopefully Sony are laughing all the way to the bank with this news and do not go down the same route and nintendo continue using game cards at least. I don't really like the idea of everything being cloud based, mainly because the internet is garbage so it takes near enough 2 days to download current games and streaming them is like watching a video or stream at 480p. If that is the future of the entire gaming eco-system I'm done with it and will stick with my existing collection.

If that happens I'm likely to go and emulate all the games I missed instead. Have classic consoles, will use

Streaming is tougher to sell although it's true that everything is turning towards a subscription/cloud based business model these days, from cars to computer hardware, the consoles already are part of the way there so it wouldn't surprise me if eventually they go all the way. I doubt it would completely replace the hardware though, like geforce now doesn't replace actual graphics cards, but nvidia sells both, we could see in the future a sort of "playstation basic" where it's a simple TV box that streams games you buy on the PS store that are played in the cloud and it costs something like 99.99$/€/£.

But removing the disc drive from all models and making you buy games online only, that one I can easily see happening come 2027. If they do go all digital I'd like to see the same rules that the EU applied to smartphone ecosystems about allowing third party stores apply to consoles as well or the market is just going to be entirely monopolized by each console manufacturer, you still wouldn't be able to resell anything though cause you wouldn't actually own anything anyway, the worst thing about that model is the only thing you're buying is a license to play xyz game and not the game itself.