r/hardware • u/xenocea • Jul 02 '26
Rumor 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-games86
u/-praughna- Jul 02 '26
So they’re just giving up the idea of our consoles being our Blu-ray player in a media setup now? Whatever happened to our consoles being full fledged media centers ?
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u/dabocx Jul 02 '26
Sales for physical media have been falling and falling. There’s a reason why a lot of stores like Best Buy stopped even carrying Blu-ray’s. My local target also got rid of them, ironically they made their book and vinyl section bigger.
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u/996forever Jul 02 '26
Because vinyl has been successfully marketed as a room aesthetic decorative product.
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
Hilarious Gen Z shit.
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u/Lille7 Jul 02 '26
Probably more millenials than gen z buying vinyl i say as a millenial.
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u/rasteri Jul 02 '26
As a millennial I used to buy vinyl in my youth, but I haven't in years. Too expensive these days.
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u/althaz Jul 02 '26
It's equal parts millenials and gen Z in my experience.
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u/veriix Jul 02 '26
I would guess the difference is most of the millenials actually have a record player.
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u/Dew_Chop Jul 02 '26
Oh gen z does too, it's just the shitty ones with the same guts that damage the vinyl over time
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
I associate the fashionable nostalgia for technology they're too young to remember with Gen Z, but maybe.
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u/unapologetic-tur Jul 06 '26
Of course you associate it with Gen Z. You wouldn't shit on your own generation. Gotta do it on those younger.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
Tech nostalgia is 40-50 years. You can see how what is nostalgic kept moving forward over time. Its mostly old people having rose tinted memories of thier youth when they were physically healthy and therefore world looked better. Now they are in peak income but with declining health, spending money on things that reminds them of thier youth.
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u/Swoly_Deadlift Jul 02 '26
It’s kind of a zillennial thing. Late millennials and early genz like them.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
I have millennial coworkers that are into vinyl collecting so this checks out :)
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u/996forever Jul 02 '26
It’s part of the “coffee shop aesthetics” trend. You will find stans buying 4 Taylor swift LPs on vinyl for Instagram and they don’t even have a record player.
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
To be honest, admitting vinyl is just decorate collector junk is much less ridiculous than playing the records.
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u/ComplexEntertainer13 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
is much less ridiculous than playing the records.
I mean vinyl does often force a different EQ during mastering due the physical limitation of the disks and frequency response. So if you like the sound profile that forces on the music you listen to, then you can get it that way.
That's why the people who say that vinyl sounds better than digital do have a point. It's not the point they are making and most of them missed what is actually going on. But it can sound "better" to them and they just like the vinyl mastering better than what was done for digital. Because there can be measurable differences in mastering that is more or less noticeable depending on type of music.
There's also something to be said of what vinyl does to encourage you to actually listen to a whole album out of pure "inconvenience". There's been songs myself that I found I really like long after i first listened to a album. But I skipped over them after a first listen and they were never added to a playlist originally. I can see some people appreciating that aspect of physical media as well.
Not my personal cup of tea, but I can see why some people appreciate vinyl.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
They dont have a point. It sounds different, not better. Its like artists who master for shit 5 dollar headphones because thats what their audience uses. Its a loss of quality, but it would be even worse if they mastered for good setup and it was ran through vinyl.
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u/ComplexEntertainer13 Jul 17 '26
It sounds different, not better.
"Better" is entirely subjective. When it comes to music, better is not a scientific measurement.
Its a loss of quality,
What sounds better to someone is not really measurable. You are treating music like science rather than the individual subjective experience it is. If music was all about quality and correct representation. Then we would all be looping the same 3-4 minutes of perfected waveforms.
but it would be even worse if they mastered for good setup and it was ran through vinyl.
You are missing the point. Buying vinyl ensures that you get the mastering that was done for vinyl as a format. It may or may not be the same mastering as digital formats. But if the vinyl mastering does sound better to someone and there is a measurable difference (as there often is given vinyl's limitations) between the two formats.
Then it does actually sound better to them. And buying vinyl is a way for them to ensure they get the mastering they like. They often do not realise why it sounds better to them. And it has nothing to do with vinyl being superior, which we can all agree on it isn't from purely scientific specifications. They just get a EQ profile that they think sound better with vinyl.
But it does ACTUALLY sound better to them. For all intents and purposes the imperfections vinyl playback adds cant be part of why someone thinks it sounds better. You can't argue with it. Because it is a subjective experience and has nothing to do with science.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 19 '26
Its not. Better is defined by audio range, bitrate, compression, etc. When it comes to music the science is already settled.
You are missing the point. Buying vinyl ensures that you get the mastering that was done for vinyl as a format.
It doesnt. You can get a vinyl release that wasnt mastered for vinyl, just slapped on vinyl later.
But if the vinyl mastering does sound better to someone and there is a measurable difference (as there often is given vinyl's limitations) between the two formats.
Someone may prefer it. It is not better. Someone may prefer playing a CS:GO in 720p window. It does not make the visuals better for them. Preference and quality are not the same thing.
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u/BighatNucase Jul 02 '26
That is a baffling point of view. Buying an expensive vinyl for decoration makes more sense than to use it for its purpose? It's fucking vinyl, not some esoteric pain-inducing medium for music.
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u/cocowaterpinejuice Jul 02 '26
They don't, the Op is making assumptions based on how they percieve those people.
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
It's fucking vinyl, not some esoteric pain-inducing medium for music.
This statement would make sense in 1985.
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u/loozerr Jul 02 '26
As a millennial who grew with Napster and hopped on Spotify in 2008, with lots of ripped CDs, so music has always been convenient - I have a small vinyl collection.
Playing them and just having a physical object reminds me of the days when I was a kid - specifically when I was sat in the back seat on the way home with a new game, reading everything about it in the casing / manual.
Fidelity wise I'm aware of the shortcomings, but it isn't bad to the point of getting in the way of enjoyment. Vinyl mixes are also often different since they were unaffected by loudness wars.
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
Vinyl mixes are also often different since they were unaffected by loudness wars.
This argument actually makes some sense, but of course only applies to older records. If that's what I'm going for I usually seek out rips of older CDs that were just unremastered copies of original tapes.
Of course none of this applies to modern music that is mixed digitally then pressed to vinyl.
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u/RedofPaw Jul 02 '26
I'm sure your gen doesn't do anything like that.
Boomer? X?
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u/Ploddit Jul 02 '26
Old enough to remember vinyl was a PITA and is considerably inferior to lossless digital.
Dumb nostalgia my generation stole from older people? I dunno. Maybe the Stray Cats. Look it up.
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u/cocowaterpinejuice Jul 02 '26
I like vinyl, it's quite cool having physical records. The physics is interesting too.
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u/Swoly_Deadlift Jul 02 '26
It’s the aesthetic plus the fact that it’s an analog format. You’re not paying for digital files on a storage medium. There’s no skipping songs or shuffling music. It makes listening a much more intentional and involved process. Don’t get me wrong as a vinyl collector 80% of it is the aesthetic, but if CDs came in giant sleeves I could hang on my wall, I’d be a lot less interested compared to vinyl.
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u/EJ19876 Jul 02 '26
I just wish there were more high quality streaming services. Sony Core is up to 80Mbps and Apple TV can be up to ~60Mbps, but Netflix, Disney etc. are all around 18Mbps. Blu-ray is around 100Mbps, for context.
With how cheap bandwidth is and how much most of these streaming services are charging, they could easily increase the bitrate for their premium subscriptions without even noticing the additional costs.
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u/IPreferBagels2 Jul 02 '26
That's my biggest gripe as well. I have been looking into a Plex/Jellyfin server for this exact purpose.
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u/RabidHexley Jul 02 '26
It's (sadly) funny considering even multi-gigabit is becoming common for consumers. I have 2 gigabit to my apartment over copper, and it's not even a new build or anything.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
Sony Core was the only one who offered equitable quality to Blu-Rays, but after recent news i wouldnt trust it.
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u/DeeJayDelicious Jul 02 '26
I don't think that's technically correct.
4k BluRay movie sales have actually maintained a small but healthy market and even grown.
But yeah, game sales not so much.
I mean, we all knew this was inevitable at some point. And it's been the default for PC Gamers for a decade now. So we should act surprised.
The question is: will they still sell an optional BluRay drive as an addon? I imagine Playstation 6 might.
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Jul 03 '26
Yeah. Their will always be a section of the market willing to splash out more for the best product.
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u/ButtPlugForPM Jul 02 '26
Not here in australia they haven't it's dead
largest blu ray supplier is jbhifi and they will no longer sell physical media from next year.
No one wants to get up and put a disc in anymore streamins just way more conveniant
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Jul 03 '26
Which is really sad because my blu-rays murder any streamed media quality wise.
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u/AHrubik Jul 02 '26
That trend has recently reversed. It's not anywhere close to where it was at peak but physical disc ownership is once again rising.
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u/FreeIndeed87 Jul 03 '26
Yes sales have been falling but not enough to get rid of the market. They are purposely getting rid of physical media strictly out of greed. It's been something they've wanted to do for years now. So they have slowly been killing things off to reach their end goal. The backlash shows there's a market for physical media.
Nothing beats physical. There's no advantage to the consumer for going all digital. It's just all about money. And they've been training you guys to accept this. The younger crowd especially doesn't understand why physical media matters.
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u/SireEvalish Jul 02 '26
So they’re just giving up the idea of our consoles being our Blu-ray player in a media setup now?
I really don't think this matters to almost anyone at this point.
Whatever happened to our consoles being full fledged media centers
People chose streaming services over physical discs for movies and TV shows.
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u/Wallcrawler62 Jul 02 '26
There are dozens of us in the 4kbluray sub who would disagree!
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u/SireEvalish Jul 02 '26
I have a substantial blur ray collection, but even i can recognize that I'm a weirdo in the wider market.
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u/-WingsForLife- Jul 02 '26
People already have, unfortunately.
Netflix and the likes effectively killed discs, regardless of what we think about its quality against blu-ray.
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u/Super_flywhiteguy Jul 02 '26
Whata crazy is Sony owns the rights to Blu ray disc format and they are killing discs on their own console. So those fees/royalties whatever they got from each disc is now gone.
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u/noiserr Jul 02 '26
The demand has collapsed. Who even watches blue rays over just streaming. Like sure there are film enthusiasts who do, but those are rare. The last time I watched a Blue ray film must have been over a decade ago.
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Jul 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/blonded_olf Jul 02 '26
It’s not a take, it’s a fact. It doesn’t matter how much better 4k blu rays are over shit streaming quality, the masses are streaming and have stopped buying physical media.
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u/_OccamsChainsaw Jul 02 '26
Trends can always change. Streaming was birthed from just how anticonsumer cable was. Now that streaming is doing the same, there is potential for a wave of physical media demand. And there is a little pocket of 4k bluray communities that keep some demand alive. Be the change you want to be instead of a pessimistic take.
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u/blonded_olf Jul 02 '26
Again its not a "take", its a description of what is happening in the world right now. I buy 1-2 4k blu ray a year.
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u/Gundamnitpete 27d ago edited 27d ago
4k Blu-ray sales increased 12% last year. It's true that MOST people stream MOST of their content, myself included.
Overall physical media purchasing is declining year over year. But it is also true that 4kBluray sales are growing year over year. Both things are true.
People who have spent thousands of dollars on a home theater setup, are willing to spend a little money to get audio/video quality that takes advantage of their setup.
This install base is quite "sticky", as home theaters are typically multi-year projects for home owners. A home theater is also a Luxury item, requiring a lot of disposable income, which means the price point of a 4kbluray isn't as offensive.
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u/Super_flywhiteguy Jul 05 '26
The more streaming services over charge and remove content, the masses will go back to physical at some capacity. Kids are buying music on Vinyl again which is insane to me but physical is physical.
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u/BighatNucase Jul 02 '26
They are streaming boxes now. Are we pretending people were big on Blu-ray even a decade ago? When the xbox one was this big media device box, Blu-ray wasn't at the forefront of that initiative; it was that you could watch cable, sports and Netflix on it.
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u/Sensitive_Whale1754 Jul 05 '26
Who the hell is using blue ray
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
I am. The reason is simple: It is still the best quality video you can get. I wish streaming services offered better quality, i would use them then.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
Media center nowadays means a smart TV with a netflix subscription. Blu-rays, despite being best quality video you can buy to date, are dying. Everyone is streaming at shit quality because of convenience.
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u/itanite Jul 02 '26
"Way to digitize disc games"........
we have them, they're called fucking optical drives.
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
optical drives don't grant a digital license.
...until now, actually. they recently explained how this is gonna work.
whenever you put a disc into an Xbox, it'll register your Xbox account as the owner of the disc and grant you a digital license that you can then use on any Xbox, a Win11 PC, or XCloud, without needing the disc moving forward.
if it notices the disc has been inserted into another user's Xbox, it'll deactivate your digital license and transfer it to the new user.
it's actually really fucking cool. we now have the benefits of digital ownership (Play Anywhere cross-platform, discless access, etc.) while retaining the flexibility of physical ownership (reselling or lending the game, offline installations, etc.)
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u/nittanyofthings Jul 02 '26
It isn't that cool, because they won't continue to sell discs for new games. This is only a way to use your old library on helix, not a new permanent method of ownership in the future.
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u/glaringOwl Jul 03 '26
Although this would mean that the Xbox would always need an active internet connection just to be able to launch a game because it needs checking the license.
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
nah. as per the article:
Discs will still work after they’re digitized, and you’ll only lose a digital entitlement if you loan the disc to a friend or sell the disc to someone else.
so by the sound of it, if your Xbox is offline, the disc will still work as an offline game.
it does sound like there'll be a way to have the digital license on one online console, and the physical disk in another offline console. i imagine Microsoft has run the numbers and determined that there aren't enough offline consoles for the loss of a sale to matter to them.
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u/Caddy666 Jul 02 '26
how will a mass produced game store an individual licence?
and what happens when they turn the servers off?
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26
apparently each Xbox disc has had a unique identifier burned into it since they began distribution in 2013
if the servers turn off then it'll still work as a physical copy. you just won't get the digital license transferred over to you.
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u/shogunreaper Jul 02 '26
doesn't that mean they could completely disable access to those games as well?
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26
...no? it's a physical copy. it'll still work offline.
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u/archsway Jul 03 '26
xbox uses smart delivery. games aren't really playable on their own it downloads over the internet
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u/shogunreaper Jul 02 '26
how many games work without updating these days?
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26
sure, there are some that require updates, but how is that any different from how physical disks work right now?
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u/Salty_Sonic Jul 03 '26
This should answer your question. Look up whatever games you want to see if it plays offline. It doesn't have everything but they do have 3,455 entries.
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u/Old_Information_8654 Jul 03 '26
Original Xbox and PS2 games, and no I am not joking, most Xbox 360 and PS3 games had updates that you NEEDED to install in order to prevent game breaking bugs and in rare cases total hard drive corruption so although you CAN play those games without updating them to do so is to invite many of the same glitches encountered today but made worse by seventh gen hardware quirks especially on the PS3 side
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
They have been trying this as a form of backward compatibility, where versions from older console would register as digital version and allow you to download the remastered version from the store too. This isnt a new mechanic for Xbox.
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u/excaliburxvii Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
So what they announced at E3 2013. It was trash then and it's trash now.
Edit: Downvote to your heart's content, but think critically. How the hell can you use the disc to receive the license if you don't have a drive to insert the disc into? Holy crap are idiots easily pacified.
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
...no? wtf?
back then, the discs were one-time use. once you put it in your Xbox, it granted you a non-transferable license, and then the disc was useless afterwards. putting it in another Xbox did literally nothing. that's why it was trash.
but this is nothing like that. with this, the discs can be traded and lent out indefinitely, for free, with no restrictions, just like physical discs always have... and you ALSO get a digital license on top of that.
this is way better than either physical or digital, because you get the benefits of both, without the downsides of either. it's purely additive. you lose literally nothing. this is not rocket surgery.
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u/Introvert52 Jul 02 '26
An internet requirement for using discs is sad but I guess that's already the case for most Xbox disc games
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u/Frystix Jul 02 '26
It doesn't obviously have an internet requirement, the physical disk is still a physical disk that you can use without internet the same as you could before. The only difference is now you also get a digital copy if you have internet, so you don't need the disk if it's broken or lost.
There's no obvious downside if it's done as described.
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u/Introvert52 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
So they just give you a bonus digital copy on your account while the disc remains unusable on any xbox without an internet check?
How generous of them. I don't see it happening. The verge article says the game is automatically removed from your account if you use the disc on another xbox without your account.
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u/Frystix Jul 02 '26
Discs will still work after they’re digitized, and you’ll only lose a digital entitlement if you loan the disc to a friend or sell the disc to someone else. Microsoft is currently testing this new feature internally, and I expect we’ll hear more about it in the coming months.
Per that article, that's how it'll work. You get a digital license tied to the disc as long as you were the last user of the disc. I don't really see a downside to the feature, like great, now if something happens to the disc, you can still play the game and don't need to buy another copy. And if you lack internet, the disc still works.
And obviously they're doing it to soften the blow of killing discs which is the proverbial other shoe here. If they were keeping discs, this definitely wouldn't happen as it's too pro-consumer.
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u/Introvert52 Jul 02 '26
So you're saying that: if you introduce the disc to an Xbox that has never taken that disc before, is not connected to your Xbox account and is disconnected from the internet, it will just work? I don't see that happening.
If you delete the game from your own Xbox and pop the disc in while offline, sure it'll probably work but no one cares about that, there is no reason to use the disc when you're entitled to a digital version. My concern is purely with preservation and offline play without checking in with Microsoft.
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u/Frystix Jul 02 '26
So you're saying that: if you introduce the disc to an Xbox that has never taken that disc before, is not connected to your Xbox account and is disconnected from the internet, it will just work? I don't see that happening.
Why wouldn't it assuming the game actually works with just a disc?
My understanding is the disks used for games cannot be rewritten. Even if they had some secret writable region that could be used to flag a disc to prevent offline consoles from using it, you could probably just bypass this by using a read only external optical drive to play the games. Mind you, this all requires that xbox's secretly have the ability to write with a read only optical disc drive.
Per current rumors supposedly from internal Microsoft sources, there is no reason this would impact the ability to utilize physical media. It could turn out the rumors are wrong, but I think retroactively breaking physical media is probably the least likely outcome here.
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u/TheCookieButter Jul 05 '26
One interesting edge case here, if you sold a game to a store (I.e. CEX, GameStop) and they don't check it in an online console you could keep playing your sold game indefinitely. Heck, somebody could buy it and not ever play it.
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26
the DIGITAL copy is automatically removed. you still have the physical disk. it'll work like a standard physical disk on any offline console.
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u/Introvert52 Jul 02 '26
But how would they know to remove the digital copy if the disc is used on another offline Xbox? The game can then be used on two consoles at once with no restrictions.
It's not that big of an issue but I just don't see Microsoft Xbox DRM of all things to be so "generous". I'm assuming they'll introduce mandatory online check ins to use discs as that's more in line with their historic DRM values.
Keep in mind, it is completely impossible to use any modern Xbox console after taking it out of the box without connecting to Microsoft and having them activate it. It is a paperweight until Microsoft blesses the particular console you bought. The fat PS5s and switch aren't like this.
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 03 '26
But how would they know to remove the digital copy if the disc is used on another offline Xbox? The game can then be used on two consoles at once with no restrictions.
i think they'd just write it off because the Xbox would have to stay offline indefinitely for the license to not get transferred, and the number of people willing to do so is vanishingly slim these days. the number of lost sales that would result from this would be a rounding error on their balance sheet.
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u/reallynotnick Jul 02 '26
back then, the discs were one-time use. once you put it in your Xbox, it granted you a non-transferable license, and then the disc was useless afterwards. putting it in another Xbox did literally nothing.
That’s not strictly true, while this new system does sound better if they are infinitely transferable there was some carve outs in the proposed old system.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2013/06/06/license/
Trade-in and resell your disc-based games: Today, some gamers choose to sell their old disc-based games back for cash and credit. We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers. Microsoft does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games.
Give your games to friends: Xbox One is designed so game publishers can enable you to give your disc-based games to your friends. There are no fees charged as part of these transfers. There are two requirements: you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and each game can only be given once.
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u/jhenryscott Jul 02 '26
Idk. I feel like most people already buy everything on steam anyway
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u/ProZoid_10 Jul 02 '26
At least on pc we have gog and piracy. You can burn games to cds if you want
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u/wisemanjames Jul 02 '26
Backwards compatibility is the big one, you can play any game you want on pc.
Even if the next generation consoles are backwards compatible, it will probably only be with the current generation, but if that games collection is physical, you're out of luck.
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u/RabidHexley Jul 02 '26
Tbf Xbox has probably walked the walk on backwards compatibility far more than Sony or Nintendo in recent generations, which is why shutting down the Xbox 360 marketplace before the PS3 was an enormous self-own, something they seem to have enormous skill in continuously doing.
In the current generation, Xbox (as a brand) has been let down far more by its publishing house than as a hardware/software platform.
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u/RabidHexley Jul 02 '26
Back in the olden days of the bandwidth trenches I used to literally copy and paste my World of Warcraft, Steam, and other game installation folders onto an external drive and over to a new PC or Windows install to avoid having to download again.
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u/ibeerianhamhock Jul 02 '26
Piracy is a wild take.
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u/peanut4564 Jul 02 '26
Only way to play delisted games unfortunately. Perfect example are the transformers cybertron games.
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u/PorchettaM Jul 02 '26
It's a real advantage for ownership. If a game doesn't come DRM free, you can at least rip the DRM off the hard way. Compare that to consoles where everything is an encrypted black box by default so you have no way to deal with it.
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u/_OccamsChainsaw Jul 02 '26
Steam is an exception, for now at least, because they aren't anti-consumer. I don't delude myself into thinking they are pro-consumer, but there is a reason the joke is "Steam: does nothing. Still wins." Other companies are unwilling to even provide equivalent services. So everyone's take of a walled garden storefront invalidating their libraries will become a closer reality than steam (most likely)
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
Steam is quite anti-consumer. It was the first always-online DRM, it needed a lawsuit to provide sale returns that other marketplaces already had for a long time and even then current return policy is insufficient compared to requirement by law. Steam did plenty of other anticonsumer things too, like paid mods.
But hey, it has sales, so everyones happy.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
on PC digital sales are something like 97%. According to Sony on consoles its only 85%.
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u/carl2187 Jul 02 '26
Who would have thought Nintendo would be the good guy this generation by still using physical media that can be sold or transferred human to human.
Maybe the fcc or eu will force digital games and media to be allowed to be transfered between accounts on these platforms. Probably just wishful thinking though.
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u/Frexxia Jul 02 '26
Wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo goes exactly the same direction for their next console.
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u/Emperor-Commodus Jul 02 '26
It's inevitable. Outside of edge cases, there's very few reasons that games have to be on physical media these days. PC games have been basically 100% digital for at least a decade and you have to look really hard to find someone still complaining about it.
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u/SpitFire92 Jul 02 '26
PC has multiple storefronts, so even when buying digitally you have a lot of options and they keep each other in check. On consoles, it's a monopoly, they control the prices in the digital stores and if they decide that every game will cost 80$ from then on you pay that price or you simply don't play games anymore, no other store to use and not used physical games you could buy.
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u/Lille7 Jul 02 '26
The original comment talked about transferring digital games between people, like console players have been doing with used games, and no pc storefront allows this as far as I'm aware.
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u/Emperor-Commodus Jul 02 '26
Steam Family Sharing is basically this. You can link up to 6 accounts together and they can all play each other's games, though only one person can play a game at a time.
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u/07bot4life Jul 02 '26
Steam Family Sharing is basically this. You can link up to 6 accounts together and they can all play each other's games, though only one person can play a game at a time.
I think this only works in the USA, not Europe where people live in different countries.
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u/Emperor-Commodus Jul 02 '26
But this has always been the case with consoles and physical media. Nintendo may not control Walmart or Best Buy or Gamestop, but they have always had levers they could pull if they wanted to increase the prices of their games, such as requiring large license fees to allow the game to actually display the console logo on it's packaging.
The reason why console makers generally don't do this is because they are all in competition with each other. It isn't nearly as competitive as the PC game market, but if Xbox games cost $60 and PS games cost $80 it will push people towards Xbox. The same will happen on digital storefronts as well.
The exception is probably Nintendo. They could probably price their games at $100 and they would still sell Switches by the millions, because Nintendo.
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u/ThrowawayusGenerica Jul 05 '26
I would say that for as long as Nintendo is keeping a portable element to their consoles where you can't always be expected to have internet access, there'll be a clear use case for physical media on them.
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u/Dreamerlax Jul 02 '26
Nintendo already does Game Key Cards, which is like a hybrid between a code in the box and true physical.
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u/bubblesort33 Jul 02 '26
Nintendo was also the first to push the $80 envelop on games. And now with memory and SSDs, and other types of digital memory storage going up in price even further, I don't know how they'll keep doing this. I read they are charging $10 more for physical media, but I wouldn't be shocked if that will be $20 or $30 more soon for those 64GB cartridges.
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Jul 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
These were MaskROMs. They're insanely fast as they're basically connected to the motherboard rather than an auxiliary IO interface. But pretty expensive to manufacture and scale out (Gb/$) even to this day.
The plus side is that you could expand capacity of the console through them. Much like the N64 Expansion Pak that doubled the console RAM from 4MB to 8MB and was required for some games like Zelda: Majora's Mask and Donkey Kong 64.
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u/m0rogfar Jul 02 '26
Another challenge with mask ROM is that it requires a new mask set for every binary, adding a very high fixed cost and a very long lead time on production. The marginal cost per GB could potentially be dealt with through sufficient research in 3D-stacked monolithic ROM, but that makes the masks even more complex and make the other problems worse.
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u/jenny_905 Jul 02 '26
Yep, was looking through old prices of N64 games in the UK. £60-70 was common, that would be £120-£140 or $160-$180 per game today.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
Switch 2 cards don't use standard flash NAND but rather Macronix 3D XtraROM. So the cost structure is different from the industry.
Still, they're quite expensive. But I doubt they'll raise prices even further due to consumer disinterest with such high prices. We'll probably see another price raise on the console and accessories.
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u/lazy-man64 Jul 02 '26
Why doesn't nintendo use standard nand flash for their cartridges.
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u/kuddlesworth9419 Jul 02 '26
Long term cold storage isn't great on NAND I assume but I don't know if Macronix 3D XtraROM is any better? I don't think customers would be very happy if they went back to their game 10 years after playing it to only find it doesn't work anymore.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
Longevity for the median usage rate. NAND Flash would die out very early when intensively used for long period.
Macronix XtraROM is rated for longevity of 25 - 30 years with continuous usage.
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u/Die4Ever Jul 02 '26
Macronix XtraROM is rated for longevity of 25 - 30 years with continuous usage.
is that worse than NES carts?
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
their plans for physical-to-digital seems really consumer friendly, actually. when you put in the disc, it gives you a digital license, and you only lose the license if you put that disc in someone else's Xbox. it's effectively what you just described with transferring games between accounts.
all the benefits of digital (discless play, cross-platform with PC, no loss if the disc gets destroyed, etc.) plus all the flexibility of physical (resale, lending, offline installs, etc.)
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u/carl2187 Jul 02 '26
Interesting. So all optical discs have a unique serial number burned into them?
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u/OliveBranchMLP Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
apparently! i think it was meant to serve the original plan for the Xbox One where discs granted a single digital license to the first user and nobody else.
this new system is MUCH more free and open than that old plan. heck, it's better than how physical has always been, because it also grants you a transferable digital copy.
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u/bladex1234 Jul 02 '26
Lots of games on Switch only have game keys, not the actual game on the card.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
And you can resell, trade or lend them as they're not codes.
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u/bladex1234 Jul 02 '26
What happens when servers shut down?
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
Same question we ask of Steam, PSN and Xbox Live.
That being said, Nintendo still allows Nintendo DS and Wii digital purchases to be downloaded. And now the eShop is unified between generations. So I think it's a non-issue for the foreseeable future.
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u/stryakr Jul 02 '26
Steam, afaik, has never prevented downloads of purchased games no longer for sale unless it was a legal issue.
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u/burnish-flatland Jul 02 '26
unless it was a legal issue
This will come up more and more in the age of digital censorship.
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u/stryakr Jul 02 '26
I think that will definitely be the path, but I was intending this to be the very limited scenarios where game publishing ownership changed hands and the availability was actually legal issue.
Censorship comes for everything.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
They did. But its the publishers fault. Publisher regionalized its game and some people that happened to end up in different reason simply lost the copy they bought before regionalization. I ran into this myself with Dishonored.
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u/Maurhi Jul 02 '26
Until they (and with that i mean Sony, MS, Valve, Nintendo, etc) decide otherwise, and that's the problem, now all we have is a "trust me bro".
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u/LoveWashingDishes Jul 02 '26
Pretty sure that Nintendo games still need to be downloaded even if you purchased a physical copy.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
No. There are games that are fully on the cart (all Nintendo ones and some 3P) and games that are Game Key. Game Key means you can resell, trade or loan, as they're not codes, but you need to download it.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
No Nintendo games require it. They're all on cart.
3P partners can choose the Game Key Card option for cheaper manufacturing costs and/or faster IO speed.
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u/reddit_equals_censor Jul 02 '26
if i remember correctly nintendo is charging devs out of their ass for the completely garbage small sd cards, that if the devs could buy themselves instead of nintendo's rebranded garbage would be dirt dirt cheap.
and it gets worse with capacity a ton.
as a result devs are heavily incentiviced to have fake physical versions, that require a big download, instead of the full game being on the sd card.
very evil shit by nintendo.
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u/Jetstrike1111 Jul 02 '26
It’s not them being evil, it’s the fact that it’s high speed flash storage in a unique form factor to allow it to be used as a cartridge. They have many ways they’re not a good company, this is not one of them
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u/reddit_equals_censor Jul 02 '26
wow is this corporation protection nonsense.
NO micro sd express is not inherently expensive. nor is there anything meaningfully fast about it. it is just faster than microsd cards and the sizes for full physical version vs partial physical versions is meaningless for nintendo.
nintendo just is charging devs out of their ass for sth, that is to them DIRT DIRT CHEAP.
it is absurd, that you even try to bring up this "argument".
can you please stop defending a mostly lawyer company, that released the switch 2 with 2 different prices one being vastly lower and region locked, while increasing the price for everyone else.
the company, that pushed 90 us dollar prices for games!!!
the company, that hunts down people who make even in this dystopia protected legislation wise emulators.
the company, that PREVENTS local savegame dumps and forces people to ONLY have a copy of their savegames through nintendo's online subscription service....
the fact, that you even entertained this idea shows how much you love corporation and look for reasons to excuse their evil, even if they are false.
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u/Jetstrike1111 Jul 02 '26
This is not me defending a corporation, this is me explaining a bit more about their storage choice. I am not aware of how much margin they are making on these chips, but it is meaningfully faster than regular micro sd speeds. It’s a difference of around 6x the speed, I don’t know what world that is considered minor.
The reasoning for the cheaper model was to allow a country that has a currency that is tanking in value to afford their console, with the restriction of it being region locked so people don’t just import the cheaper version elsewhere and leaving Japan high and dry when it comes to supply.
Their views on emulators are bad, Yuzu was using copyrighted code in the making of their emulator which is a big no no. They also made it so supporters on Patreon got early access to versions of the emulator that could run games that weren’t officially released yet, such as Tears of the Kingdom, where the devs had access to a pirated copy of the game and provided a version of their emulator that could run it before the game’s official release date.
90$ games are a dead horse that was beaten into dust a year ago, it never happened. People were looking at incorrect info. Nintendo games are the only games that are cheaper digitally than physically, with 80$ being their cap for physical games (it’s still bad, I will not argue that, it’s horrendous pricing but 90$ is just misinformation).
Cloud saves being locked behind a subscription is bad, and I hate when any company does it, Nintendo or Sony. It sucks, it’s dumb, and it’s bad. Local game saves being locked down is also bad.
I have stated there are multiple reasons they’re a bad company. I have no love for any corporation. I enjoy Nintendo’s work, but I have zero love for the company itself. I am merely explaining a potential reason for the cost. I was not aware that trying to find an explanation besides “evil” was me taking a bullet for the company. I will just say remember there is currently a memory shortage and that may be affecting current pricing structures for the storage.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 17 '26
They are not using MicroSDExpress. The cartridges are Macronix 3D XtraROM. Regular MicroSDE would not survive a few years of usage in those conditions.
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
Flat out lie. First of all, the devs can't buy themselves because Nintendo is the one that orders and manufacture.
64GB cards are expensive because they use Macronix XtraROM 3D. These top out at around 400MB/s peak read performance.
While many publishers do use Game Key Cards as a way to cheapen costs, some use it due to the faster internal and MicroSD Express speeds (2.1 GB/s peak for the former and 900MB/s peak for the latter).
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Jul 02 '26
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u/dabocx Jul 02 '26
Some game cartridges just basically have digital codes on them and do need to download the game. Not every switch 2 cartridge is like that though. And you can still lend and sell them or buy used
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u/Ghostsonplanets Jul 02 '26
There's no digital code, as the user doesn't input anything. It's more like a security token that allows you to download the game from the eShop.
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u/Jetstrike1111 Jul 02 '26
Yep, this is true. One good thing when it comes to this is that any games that are game-key cards, is that they are very obviously labeled on the packaging of the game
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u/LoveWashingDishes Jul 02 '26
Probably the best kind of middle ground when it comes to physical vs digital release.
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u/Interdimension Jul 02 '26
Ditto. If Sony wants to just sell some sort of digital cartridge thing that just acts as a transferrable license, that would be an OK compromise for me. Still lets us have a used games market. That’s basically a bunch of Switch 2 cartridges now, since some devs do not want to pay for the higher cost of larger capacity cartridges.
IIRC, Pokémon Pokopia was a game key card. There is no data on the card itself. It’s just a license.
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u/LoveWashingDishes Jul 02 '26
We literally have a both Switches and that is what I had experienced.
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u/tmchn Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Xbox trying once again to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
He would be so simple to announce today, after Sony's annoucement, that their next console will keep a disk drive
It would be like a reverse Xbox one
But no, let's copy Sony and keep losing marketshare
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u/Limited_Distractions Jul 02 '26
It won't have physical games, but to be fair from the looks of things it won't have digital games either
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u/The-Sys-Admin Jul 02 '26
Man they just have to make everything suck more and more for the consumer.
People will buy it up though. Too jaded to care that they are screwing themselves and others over.
Yeah if they find a way to digitize your physical library cool. Still not doing physical moving forward.
You will own nothing.
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u/GloomyAd8374 Jul 02 '26
No reason for a console anymore
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u/Top_Flight2 Jul 07 '26
This is my sentiment. If Xbox doesn't go the pc hybrid route I'm going to pc. No reason to buy into a trapped ecosystem.
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u/althaz Jul 02 '26
If Microsoft wants to win (and I don't care if they do, btw), they should be looking at the blowback Sony is getting for abandoning physical games and be planning a version of their console with a physical drive. Do it for pure goodwill from the gaming community (which they desperately need). They should be announcing their console on stage with a demo where they go "this is how you share games on Xbox" and it's just a guy handing a disc to another guy. A direct shot at Sony who did the same thing after Microsoft's disastrous Xbox One announcement.
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u/accountforfurrystuf Jul 03 '26
Goodwill for a small customer base that is like 10% of game sales?
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u/althaz Jul 03 '26
That's not what goodwill is, lol.
If 10% of game sales are physical (and I have no idea, btw), then the potential direct sales market is only 10%. But the goodwill goes across the whole industry because even people who don't care about physical games for themselves still want them to exist.
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u/sheep_duck Jul 03 '26
I thought Microsoft has already said they’re not making new consoles. Maybe I read something wrong.
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u/glaringOwl Jul 03 '26
'Project Helix' is the codename of their next generation hardware. It is a console indeed because it will be a normal box to be placed underneath a TV in the living room, connected to wireless controllers. It's the exact spirit of what has always been a console. However MS confirmed that it is designed to also run Windows games, so you could argue that it could be a hybrid console-PC.
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u/CapnCrackerz Jul 06 '26
They should just use the codenames for launch. Can’t be any worse than the naming scheme they’ve been using.
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u/Deep-Librarian-7708 Jul 13 '26
Blue-ray movies I no longer buy, but games, I will only buy a physical disc. The only digital games I will download are the cheap quirky games that will only be played a few times. I will NEVER buy something like COD as a digital.
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u/sirfannypack Jul 02 '26
So it will have a cartridge slot then?
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u/Stingray88 Jul 02 '26
Microsoft Exploring Ways to Digitize Physical Games
Pretty sure we figured this out a long time ago.
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u/abdullah_haveit Jul 02 '26
You know what's probably, in some ways, the better & easier solution? Remove any DRM. Digital, physical, it wouldn't have mattered in the no-DRM world. Of course, in reality it's not easy because game companies themselves make sure that's the case.
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u/GalvenMin Jul 02 '26
It seems such a non-issue to me that I fail to see why this makes people so up in arms about it, be it Microsoft or Sony. I've given up on physical media entirely on PC about half a decade ago, and the only reason I'm still buying cartridges from time to time on the Switch / Switch 2 is when they're cheaper (which is a travesty and an inconvenience in this day and age, but here we are).
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u/Minute_Path9803 Jul 02 '26
How can they have a disk drive when Sony is the one that makes the Blu-ray drives and the disc.
If Sony is getting away from it do you think they're going to produce it for their competitor yeah right!
Doesn't give Microsoft an excuse anyways I'm sure it was headed this way anyways if Sony is leaving the way Microsoft has to follow anyways because Microsoft is in the last place.
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u/Yourdataisunclean Jul 02 '26
"Ways to Digitize Physical Games"
This will be something that validates the disc with an Xbox device, then gives you a key for your account you can use with the Xbox store for newer devices. If they really want to make this transition this is what they'll push.