Xbox May Have Finally Gone All-Digital
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I was near as makes no difference a console-only player at the beginning of the Xbox One era. They essentially drove me away with this type crap. I use my old Xbox maybe 5% of the time now, and Switch 10%. I got rid of all of the rest of it. Switch 2 isn't looking enticing. At least if I have to buy a Steam game I can pay a low price. If I buy a GOG game I can share it with friends. Discounts have gotten worse on console, resale-abillty is gone with no physical medium, game prices are bonkers. It's all just trying to sign me up for a subscription.
Then they started releasing nothing but garbage anyway. I'm lucky to find a new game a year I'm willing to buy anymore.
Yeah - they just released FF XVI on XBox with no physical copies insight.
Before the Civil War of GamerGate and the rise of the far left policies of removing players they found "deplorable" wasn't this the dream?
The dream was "options". If I have a console, I want my gaming process to be "see in store, impulse buy, drive home, put game in console, play instantly. 100% the game without downloading a single piece of DLC or any internet access."
If I wanted to burn bandwidth downloading things, I'd just use a PC. Which I do. Options. I have options to choose from. XBOX has made the decision to make their "console" indistinguishable from a really bad, restricted, unhelpful and unmodifiable PC rig. So... I should just use the PC rig, they no longer offer a useful or interesting secondary option.
Weird seeing the downvotes but you're right.
Why on Earth would I buy a console when I have a Steam Deck and a gaming rig? Both of those require bandwidth. What am I getting from a console that I'm not getting from the other two?
I used to love consoles for the exact reasons you named: coming home from the store, unwrapping the game package, and plopping the cartridge into the system, hearing that satisfying thunk and then powering on the console.
Now I have to download console games, or buy a disc that's just a code-shell and still download the game even if I have the disc; or worse yet, only PART of the game is on the disc (I'm looking at you PS4 version of Days Gone) and I have to download 60gb worth of patched data to play the game correctly.
Majority of all my Switch games are on cartridge, but it's looking like even Nintendo is moving away from that with Switch 2 (the Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle doesn't even include a physical copy of the game, just a download voucher. Pure bollocks).
No downvotes now, weird. Someone must've changed their mind.
It's a sad day indeed that the last major console has ceded ground and given way to the digital-only era. For handhelds, sure, I can see it, it's a handheld, you don't want to cart around cartriges, and less openings means you can make the device more water-resistant, but for real consoles... It's just sad that they've gone away.
We thought they would lower prices because no manufacturing costs.
Which is exactly what the old Phantom console promised in the early 2000s.
That didn't happen.
No, full digital was always a bad idea.