Details on Xbox One S All-Digital Edition- Coming May 2019

[dreampage]

Storage is another thing which has me concerned about the upcoming consoles.
You're right, this amount is far too pitifully small for a console where you can't simply whack in a disc to install most of the game, then connect online to download the latest patches if you want to reinstall something you had to delete, in order to play it again. Obviously it's going to require expanding in order to have more than a handful of games installed at any given time. I can see it working for an ultra-casual market, but again, for that market you're also looking at dropping the price a bit more too, especially considering what the standard S offers for the same price.

But this storage issue potentially gets even worse next-gen. Especially with Sony's announcement of requiring an SSD to load the amount of data necessary for those 8k textures - here's the thing, we already saw the jump in install size from 1080p to 4k texture packs on the Pro and X, so that's even more storage per game, and even more time to download and install one, so even more incentive to add external storage.
I currently have 6TB of 7200rpm external storage in a USB3 RAID enclosure hooked up to my XBox, and I still regularly need to delete something I am still frequently playing when I buy something new. (And I have the luxury of most downloaded games taking 30m to install, hence how when a friend got a 2TB external HD, I downloaded all the games he wanted installed on it using my box here, because his home connection takes about 12 hours for each, and at my place it took a single afternoon to install 150 or so)
Getting the same amount of storage on a console which requires SSD storage to work would mean an additional £350 expense, and likely push the cost of expanding the storage higher than the cost of the console itself.

I doubt they will go above 1TB especially in the case of SSD. They will say if you want more storage then use USB devices. Which kind of makes sense because they have to keep the price as low as possible. And a lot of players already have all kinds of storage devices so they can use them with the next consoles, too. I think a 1TB SSD is the most we can expect.

 

[Backer42]

I hope it works out.

Think of the environmental benefits that comes with digital distribution.

There are no "environmental benefits" of always-online game services. Quite the opposite. Digital distribution is using more natural resources than a one-time production and shipping of a tangible product.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

There are no "environmental benefits" of always-online game services. Quite the opposite. Digital distribution is using more natural resources than a one-time production and shipping of a tangible product.

Who said anything about always-online?

I can play Skyrim and most of my games offline, last time I checked.

 

[Backer42]

Who said anything about always-online?

The operation of digital distribution shenanigans is only about cutting out retail (which is all what publishers are interested in), but is using more energy and natural resources than a finite one-time shipping of a physical token to the customer.

Once you purchased your physical copy and brought it home burning fossil fuels, it's done. You game copy not going to burn any more. OTOH purchasing a download requires an always-online 24/7 data center operation wasting energy for years, just so you can download it at any time. And guess what every single 100 GB+ download uses in resources. Much more than just an Internet search, which isn't easy on the environment either.

tl;dr: Digital distribution is about convenience, it's about increasing revenue by cutting out jobs, it's NOT about the environment. The latter would mean turning the whole thing off (client- and server-side), when you're not playing. Which wouldn't be convenient.

 

[Old Duck]

I'll just add that some of us are bandwidth-impaired. While I prefer downloading games over physical media when I can, because I'm lazy and don't want to search for a disc in order to play the game I want, I currently have relatively slow and capped Internet, so there is no way I'll be downloading a game like Red Dead Redemption 2. Heck, even the updates to that game are a challenge for me! Same goes with videos - my Internet has nowhere near the bandwidth of a BluRay disc. This is why I'll always stick to a solution with a physical drive, unless I get really good Internet, at which point I might just pivot to a streaming service like Stadia.

Disclaimer - most of my "big" games and all my disc-based games are single-player (no Internet required).

 

[Deleted member 110222]

The operation of digital distribution shenanigans is only about cutting out retail (which is all what publishers are interested in), but is using more energy and natural resources than a finite one-time shipping of a physical token to the customer.

Once you purchased your physical copy and brought it home burning fossil fuels, it's done. You game copy not going to burn any more. OTOH purchasing a download requires an always-online 24/7 data center operation wasting energy for years, just so you can download it at any time. And guess what every single 100 GB+ download uses in resources. Much more than just an Internet search, which isn't easy on the environment either.

tl;dr: Digital distribution is about convenience, it's about increasing revenue by cutting out jobs, it's NOT about the environment. The latter would mean turning the whole thing off (client- and server-side), when you're not playing. Which wouldn't be convenient.

I see where you are coming from.

Where does digital distribution add to landfill sites though?

That's what I was referring to.

Oh, and your physical games that have online features require 24-hour servers too.