Microsoft - Xbox One S 1TB All-Digital Edition Console (Disc-free Gaming)

I have 3 XB1s (2 X and 1 S). I bought the XB1S for $199. I have rarely seen the S at full retail $299. You can almost always find it for $250 or lower. I'm a big fan of the XB1 but I tend to agree with most of the other sentiments in the reviews. If this was a sub 100-150 console I would say go for it ONLY for people on a strict budget but at this price I just simple would never recommend this for a number of reasons. 1) As I mentioned, you can almost always find a XB1S for 250 or lower. 2) I realize everything is moving digital BUT I still buy 4K discs because many of the digital retailers don't translate between one another. So you buy a 4K copy from Vudu and it is only HD on Fandango or some other service and vice versa. The physical disc plays in 4K no matter what so the disc player is important. 3) You cannot sell digital games. Until you can sell your digital games I will NEVER fully embrace a digital only world. I don't like how I am just buying the rights to use it and someone else gets to tell me how and when to use it. You don't have this problem with discs. You own the disc and you can sell it because of fair use laws. Digital games aren't subject to fair use like physical discs. 4) MOST IMPORTANT - Microsoft USED to have a policy where ALL digital games family shared (games and DLC). You could buy a single copy of a game and share it with your family. While this is still the case, it is NOT enforced and more and more game companies are coming up with ways to prevent it. This is the single reason I switched from PC gaming to XB. If this were a requirement of the platform, I would feel better but since it isn't and it is getting more and more restrictive, I could never recommend a digital only platform that doesn't have some clear rules on adherence to this platform feature.

As a LONG time Xbox fan and consumer, (I have an Original XBox, 360 and One) I feel XBox dropped the ball on this one. The XBox One S had a great selling point of having the 4K drive. If you buy one on the side you are paying well above the $50 difference between the systems. You also can not buy used games or borrow games from friends, etc. (Ok, your paying less and you know your not getting these feature, moving on) These missing features could have been justified if you put something else in there place. If you are going to go diskless, XBox really NEEDED to give this new console a larger internal drive. I have a 4 TB external drive plugged into my XBox One as games today take up A LOT of space. I have 3 games on my XBox that take up more than 100 GBs each. It would have been a better option to say, both systems retail at $300 but the diskless drive has a 3 or a 4 TB drive so you can really store all of your games on the device. With a 1 TB drive you are uninstalling and reinstalling all the time if you have even a remotely decent library of games. There is ample space in the system shell to add a second drive or have a larger drive. Heck, really give people incentive to go digital by give it a solid state drive for the games you are actively playing with a larger "storage" traditional drive. The Xbox One overall is a FANTASTIC system, however, in its current state, pay the extra $50 and get a disk based Xbox One S and skip the diskless version.

The one thing XBox had going for it over a Playstation was the 4k disc player on the One S and X. This system simply removes that disc player. Which means no 4k Blu Rays, no preordering physical copies of games (which often have exclusive content and come with discounts or gift cards), no buying physical copies of games on sale (which is almost always cheaper than digital), no sharing or borrowing games,and no buying or selling used games. They didn't even make the hard drive any bigger as a consolation for taking away the disc drive. Microsoft's response to all the negative reviews says that it is the way of the future and this system gives gamers a choice and value, which is a lie. The regular XBox One S allows gamers to choose between physical copies or downloads. It's also almost always on sale for $250 or less, and has been as low as $200 with free games included. The system with a disc is a much better value and offers more ways to play games and media. That's where the value and choice lie in the XBox lineup. Maybe when these start going on sale for $150 or less it will be a decent value for those who don't care about the disc player, but until then, it isn't worth it.

I paid less money than this for my Xbox One S a couple years ago. This is a gimped version for only $50 off the MSRP and I definitely would never pay full price for this. For me the biggest selling feature of the Xbox One S is that it doubles as a Blu-ray player (and it is a good one) so I don't need multiple boxes by my TV. Blu-ray quality is still WAY better than streaming quality and most people still have physical copies of stuff. Not to mention that sometimes getting a physical copy of a game or movie can be cheaper than digital (like if you buy one used). If they are going to remove the disc player then they should at least make it easier for people to remove and replace the hard drive themselves. If I could easily put one of my 8TB Red HDDs in there and load it up with my Blu-ray quality media it might be a different story but even then it would still be too expensive for what it is IMO. And no - I do not want to have to plug in an unsightly external drive.

Dispite the reviews and negativity, Microsoft has seen a large up-tick in digital only gamers, Their XBOX Live Gold games each month and Game Pass keeps alot of us entertained for hours. Now yes, the loss of a phyiscal disc drive or blue-ray drive for alot is a bummer. Could they of boosted the HDD space, add a second HDD where the physical drive was? Sure, but that might be an option down the road. I see this as a secondary system for the Xbox Gamer who already has the console w/ a drive and has been leaning more digital, maybe the "physical drive" xbox is on a TV for the "entertainment" console, and this one is in a bedroom or somewhere else for gaming. ie, keep in mind this is the gamer who is leaning more towards all digital but still keeps a console with a drive as he/she still has physical media. OR this is the perfect thing for Kids!! Getting away from kids touching the physical discs is a godsend for most families and gamers like myself. I cant stand the kids touching my discs. This would force me to go all digital, pay a little higher for faster internet and just download the games we constantly play on the HDD, keep the rest readily available to download. Ive seen reviews how this also appeals to the OCD or folks who are limited on space and cant hold all the games, boxes, etc with physical media. Long story short, no matter how you game, you can easily justify this. 3 Games (also included in GamePass) make up for the difference in cost. I can see this as a $150 Black Friday deal!

I have all of the Microsoft systems - OG Xbox (one of my favorite systems), X360(less favorite), XB1 , XB1X Project Scorpio, so I have invested some significant amount into MS products. I never been disappointed in their systems. I also have a pretty powerful PC for gaming as well and I gotta say that XB1X is really up there especially when they optimize their games like what they did with Forza 4. Ok, lyrics aside, I don't get the point of this product at this price point especially. MS was all about backwards compatibility, which is a great feature, but how are you gonna use it without the drive? How about pre-owned games? How about selling games that you played and enjoyed in case you don't want them anymore? Not with digital. If I want to buy digital I go to my PC. Consoles always been about collecting and trading physical media, that's the whole point. They included 3 games (one requires Gold to play), but even that does not bring it to $250 value. Sorry MS, I have been buying your products for years now, but this one is just beyond me.

The PS4 has enjoyed a lead in gaming since its release. The one saving grace of the XBOX One S and XBOX One X is that they had a 4K Bluray player instead of the standard bluray player on the PS4. This may not seem very important, but for me it was just enough to push me to buy an Xbox One S. Fast forward to this, and this is a huge missed opportunity. It would have been easy to make this a must buy. All they had to do is to use that unused extra space to include a 1TB solid state drive, and a 5TB spinning drive. Why would I go digital only? Make me do it. This is terrible. They didn't even make it physically smaller... it's confusing, it doesn't add anything, it should have never made it out to the store shelf. The only natural reaction I can think of, is to buy a PS4.

This console only saves you 50 dollars. You lose the ability to use a blue ray disc player which is worth much more than 50 dollars. You lose the ability to play any used or cheap games that you might get down the road or simply all the games you’ve bought throughout the years. Let’s be realistic here, you don’t need to specifically buy a digital only console. Buy a normal one and all you have to do is not buy discs... trust me the 50 extra dollars is worth having a blue ray and disc player. I’ve always been 100% digital but just having the blue ray for movies and having the disc tray Incase a friend gives me a game is worth more than losing it forever. The console should be 199 to make up for the blue ray loss, no point in anyone getting this honestly.