Is the World Now Ready for the All-Digital Future Microsoft Wanted 10 Years Ago?

The leaked news of Microsoft’s plan for a slim version of the Xbox Series X is not surprising – the Xbox 360 had not one but two slim versions, and the Xbox One got the significantly smaller Xbox One S, while Sony has released smaller versions of every PlayStation so far up through the PS4. But what is shocking, at least if the plan hasn’t changed, as Phil Spencer suggested some of it has in his acknowledgement of the embarrassing spillage of Microsoft’s hardware roadmap, is that the “Brooklin” (as the skinnier Series X is codenamed) doesn’t have a Blu-ray drive.

This begs the question: is the Series X that’s on store shelves and in my gaming room right now the last Xbox console that will ever include an optical drive – since the Gen10 Xbox due out in 2028 would likely follow suit and drop the disc drive? And if so, what does that mean for the future of how we buy and play games?

First, it means that Microsoft would be pulling out of retail almost entirely. Sure, they’d still love to have shelf space at the Targets and Best Buys of the world to sell the consoles themselves, but that’d be it – except for maybe a spot on the gift card rack to sell Microsoft Store gift cards. This likely wouldn’t be the bold, disruptive, and risky move it would’ve been even five years ago, though, as consumers of all goods continue to do more and more of their shopping online for the things they want and need. Shopping malls are rapidly emptying out and going extinct (which, as someone who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s thinking malls were the coolest places ever – Foot Locker! Babbage’s! The food court! The arcade! – saddens me a bit).

On a similar note, a mainstay of the video game retail ecosystem, GameStop, might finally go extinct. The company has been on a downward spiral for years as gamers have naturally been shifting to more and more online purchases, but Xbox going all-digital could push them over the edge of bankruptcy – especially if PlayStation follows suit. Sure, Nintendo likely won’t be walking away from physical media anytime soon, but can GameStop survive on Nintendo cartridges alone? I wouldn’t bet on it.

If Sony ends up sticking with Blu-ray for the duration of this console generation and particularly the next one (and it is perhaps a bit more incentivized to do so, since it owns the Blu-ray standard), it makes Microsoft’s move that much bolder. But it wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft made a big bet on where the future was headed. In 2001, Microsoft put ethernet ports on every single original Xbox console, intending to launch a broadband-only online gaming subscription service a year later, at a time when 56k dial-up modems were still the most common vehicle for internet connectivity, and subscription services were anything but normal – particularly in the video game space. That bet paid off handsomely, as Xbox Live became the best place to play games online – not just on consoles but arguably compared to a PC as well, which had its share of dial-up players, nor was a chat headset standard equipment for every player.

A later big bet – bundling the Kinect motion controller in with every single Xbox One – didn’t work, but the point is that Microsoft’s gaming division has never shied away from risks. In fact, that same Xbox One tried to go always-online before infamously backtracking on its 24-hour online check-in policy before launch.

And so the question is: is the console market now ready to go all-digital? After all, PC gaming has been there for years, and it’s thriving. I would argue that it is. The all-digital Xbox Series S has been a hit, outselling its more powerful (and, yes, more expensive) disc-drive-including sibling. Xbox Game Pass, the all-digital Netflix of gaming, has over 25 million subscribers. For gamers who still prefer to buy games on discs, either due to preference or internet bandwidth limitations, Microsoft can easily sell an external Blu-ray drive that connects to the Brooklin through its front-facing USB-C port. 

Regardless of where Microsoft goes, the next five years of console gaming are going to be mighty interesting.