There is a new game console in town, released on May 7 by Microsoft and carrying the retail label Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. True, the machine is not entirely new as it is an iteration of the original Xbox One S but there are key differences that immediately catch attention. For one, it's cheaper by $50.
The cheaper sticker price alone is already a big come-on for Xbox gamers but Microsoft thought bundling freebies with the product will make units fly off the shelves. For shelling out $249, buyers will be hauling home three game titles namely Forza Horizon 3, Minecraft and Sea of Thieves. These titles should be more than sufficient to make downtime moments exceptionally thrilling before searching for new games to explore.
But one has to be reminded - this new Xbox One S with 1TB of internal storage lacks a disc drive, which has been a mainstay feature since the console was first introduced. Chiefly, this is the reason Microsoft is able to sell the product at a marked down tag and something that gamers might not miss at all.
Good thing, Microsoft has a ready remedy and the company calls them digital games, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store or can be bought from retailers in the form of game codes. For this purpose, the go-to sellers are Amazon and GameStop, indicating that titles even in the digital world will not be very hard to find.
CNET said it is possible current Xbox console owners with an existing library of game titles can take advantage of the rumored trade-in deal from Microsoft, in which game discs can be swapped with game codes. However, the company has yet to confirm the existence of such an offering.
What has been confirmed though is that digital games already registered on an Xbox account cannot be transferred. Plainly this means there is no way to resell game codes, and potentially this would be a big letdown for Xbox fans.
In the past, owners can resell or trade disc games, which only happened following the reversal of Microsoft's original decision to make a game title on disc to function only on one Xbox account. The company walked back on the policy and there might be a chance the same would happen with game codes and digital games. This is something worth watching for.
All things covered, the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is at present the most affordable gaming machine from Microsoft. Given this, the company still intends to make the product even more irresistible as plans are underway to soon add a streaming service to the package called Project xCloud.
When the service goes live, Xbox owners will be able to experience gaming over the internet plus the likelihood of streaming other contents through the gaming console.
The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is proving a must-buy this early but inevitably its $249 sticker will see significant price cuts. This will happen through the usual aggressive deals coming from Amazon and other similar retailers.
