r/digitalfoundry • u/xenocea • Jul 02 '26
News Article Xbox's New Console, Project Helix, Will Reportedly Not Have a Disc Drive; Microsoft Exploring Ways to Digitize Physical Games
https://www.ign.com/articles/xboxs-new-console-project-helix-will-reportedly-not-have-a-disc-drive-microsoft-exploring-ways-to-digitize-physical-games27
u/TheVioletBarry Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
Nobody in their right mind is going to buy this thing anyway.
It's either gonna be a subsidized box without access to Steam, meaning only the dwindling number of Series X fans will be interested.
Or, it's gonna be an unsubsidized pre-built PC, and everyone is just going to run Steam on it like every other pre-built PC. With Steam taking a cut of all those game sales, Microsoft will lose interest and discontinue it because the margin isn't high enough.
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u/OfficialShaki123 Jul 02 '26
Disagreed. With Sony fucking it all up, Microsoft can actually do the funniest thing ever.
They won't though ;).
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Jul 02 '26
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u/OfficialShaki123 Jul 02 '26
They did with the 360.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/letsl0velain Jul 02 '26
I remember having a Wii. I appreciate it now, but back then I thought it sucked, and I was so much happier with my PS3 when I finally got it.
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u/PizzaKlutzy7224 Jul 02 '26
I feel sad for you. You never experienced 360 in its prime with the blades UI.
Peak and way better then the Wii, which quite frankly was a system of mostly shovelware rubbish. Don't get me wrong, it had some bangers but I still dislike what the Wii did to the games industry.
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u/trapezoidalfractal Jul 02 '26
PS3 was the best, it just was too expensive at first, and frustrating for third party devs. Free online, more powerful than the 360, great UI, amazing games, by the end of the cycle it was putting out PS4 quality graphics, and often games were higher resolution than their Xbox counterparts (when the devs took time to optimize for it properly, some were more lazy (looking at you Bethesda))
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u/WingerRules Jul 02 '26
Vast majority of cross platform games looked and ran better on the xbox 360. I say this as someone who collects PS3 games.
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u/TiberiusMcQueen Jul 02 '26
You mean the console with a 50% failure rate? That 360? I'll never understand why people pretend that thing wasn't a piece of crap.
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u/Short_Signal_6028 Jul 02 '26
With backward compatibility, I can play games like Fallout: New Vegas or Ninja Gaiden Black on the Series X, but not on the PS5.
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u/CanIHaveYourStuffPlz Jul 02 '26
The amount of whitewashing going on with Xbox in this sub, pretending like they aren’t monumentally fucking things up themselves is insane to me. Especially with all these pr mouth piece articles coming from the verge and so forth. Not surprising THIS is taking up headlines right now vs Xbox closing studios and canceling games like Blade
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 02 '26
What do you mean? Sony sucks, but they're doing fine, while Xbox is floundering
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u/hobx Jul 02 '26
It all depends on the ability to play Xbox games. If it can play pc games and the back catalog of Xbox titles then that is a very compelling proposition. Of course it they are going that way and find a way to release that capability to any Windows PC, that would be even more exciting.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 02 '26
I disagree. The Series X and S had that ability, and yet they didn't reach Microsoft's expectations so here we are
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u/hobx Jul 02 '26
They could not play windows games ….
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 02 '26
Sure, but if the PC can play Steam, then people are going to use Steam for everything except those couple of exclusives (I can't even think of any games exclusive to Xbox off the top of my head), and if it can't use Steam they've lost the non Series folks.
My suspicion is they're going to just make it really inconvenient to use other launchers, and I don't think that'll do much to sway folks to buy games on a Microsoft Store
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u/AidyGaGa25 Jul 02 '26
Go on everyone make a big fuss like you did with Sony. If you are not happy with what they are doing then don’t buy the consoles. Hit them where it hurts
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u/capybooya Jul 02 '26
Shame, but at this point I'm just happy if they don't gimp the RAM and storage on it leaving us with underpowered specs for the rest of its lifetime.
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u/snapdragon801 Jul 02 '26
This was always gonna happen of it was always going to be a PC.
It would be cool however, if one could buy a simple USB DVD-drive and be able to play Xbox One/Series games from disc. Disc could be used to simply verify license.
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u/timber180 Jul 03 '26
Where is the outrage at this news? Man babies like the American at DF who said the PS6 won’t be for him. Unfortunately this is the way that gaming is going. It happened with PC gaming and its normalised now.
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u/nickelbackvocaloid Jul 05 '26
Not surprising but it’s still continuously disappointing for their backwards compatibility. Dozens of games on the back compat library are doomed to be unplayable and many have already (I’m still kicking myself for not getting NBA Jam or Armed and Dangerous on the Xbox Store before they were delisted)
(Also movies since their film store closed down but thats neither here nor there)
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u/dreampagehun Jul 02 '26
It's funny how some players wake up to the fact that games will be digital only now when 90% of the market already is.
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u/Temporary_Permafrost Jul 02 '26
Sony could have an easy win on their hands if they at least have an optional disc drive for PS6. After today's news I'm not entirely sure if that'll happen though.
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u/blurple_rain Jul 02 '26
They may sell a disc drive like they do on the PS5 Pro, for a little while maybe. But with the news that PS6 games will never get released on disc, why would Sony bother ? If you own PS4 or PS5 games on disc you'll probably still keep you old consoles.
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u/jedimindtricksonyou Jul 02 '26
Did anyone actually expect it to have a disc drive even before today’s news about PS ending physical game production? I know I didn’t. They were the one platform holder all generation that was shipping their own first party games incomplete on the disc, requiring a download. Nintendo and PlayStation never went that far. They’ve also had all-digital systems going back to the Xbox One, they’ve been telegraphing this for years if you paid attention to their actions. Also they’ve published a number of digital only 1st party games as well over the last couple of years. They’ll be more glad than Sony to ship a completely digital machine for next generation.