Yes Amy Hood said she wants higher margins for Xbox. You get the highest margins for games just selling them digitally to PlayStation and Nintendo. Hey this is the future of Xbox!
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Unfortunately this will continue for a while until maybe people feel relief from seeing or being teased on the nextgen platform, the OS or this hybrid thing. Iâm hoping their presence at GDC will allay some of the fears, hopefully the tease a glimpse of what theyâre doing with the next hardware. I do think if they announced all your library will be playable on the Xbox app on PC and through streaming that would be big.
It might be good to for now continue with time exclusives. They have a solid number of games that they could still release on PlayStation and Nintendo like 11 Halo games & 7 to 8 Gears games. I do hope GDC is successful for them.
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Anyone in gaming still trying to hold onto physical is deluding themselves.
This goes outside of gaming but in media no one is using physical any more as a primary method of distribution for any media. Not movies, not music, not programs, nothing uses physical media anymore as a primary method of distribution.
This means the number printing plants for discs are getting smaller and smaller which increases costs, as Phil has pointed out the number of hardware makers for actual disc drives is getting smaller and smaller which increases costs. Many many makers of stand alone blu ray players have stopped making players all together.
So even outside gaming the entire market for physical discs is drying up. Also no game ships complete on a disc anymore, every game needs day one patches to function and game size has far outgrown discs and also reading the game directly from a disc stopped being a thing 2 gens ago.
Physical discs have ZERO long term future and donât even hold an entire complete game nowadays.
Why people canât let it go is beyond me, this is not an âownershipâ thing either as just cause you have a disc of a game doesnât mean squat anymore since no game is shipped complete on a disc.
Gamers REALLY need to let go of this stupid old school mentality.
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Retail is always cheaper (most of the times 10-15e cheaper and in some cases even 20 euros) plus I can sell/trade in my copy and pay even less for my next day one purchase. For example LaD: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii is 46e retail on PS5 when on Xbox I donât have another option than paying 60e in the Xbox store (canât find any decent deal on CDkeys too).
So yeah for me not having the option of retail sucks. 
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Nah, you should stop being stupid!
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Not to mention the collecting aspect has always been a part of gaming there are those of us who who still engage in it, and it sucks when something like "Limited Run Games " only puts out physical versions for Switch and PS5 but not xbox. Or the Capcom fighting collections, or pretty much any special Edition that comes with an artbook. Donât even get me started on that special edition Fatal Fury COTW with NeoGeo inspired Jewel Case that is only available on PS5. ( I guess I should be glad Xbox got a physical version at all)
As for movies physical may not be the main distribution method anymore, but streaming quality will never touch UHD Blu Ray that alone is worth keeping it around if youâre a videophile.
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Wonât hold my breath much on hardware mentions, they step on tomatos too many times by now to know they will think its not worth it, with their thought process being given that they have many users with libraries, they thinkis none will abandon the ecosystem, sounds smart but even i know they should not be thinking this way, i mean last time they did that we got the 2013 debacle.
Here is how i think it goes, they continue to annouce games for playstation and Nintendo(April 2 will be the big one alongside maybe Future game show, but i have doubts Xbox wants to do anything with Summer Gameshow after the Indiana Jones debacle(Which was in poor taste in some way, i think its good to at least acknowledge that) but will not reveal hardware whatsover this year. I do see them TRY, at least, do make some exclusives for core customers this year in order to maintain some semblance of their strenght in the ecosystem(Replaced, 33 Immortals, Mecha Break and some others not yet revealed), but that is something they are gonna have to deal with given their promise on the start of this generation. But hey, they did this themselves so its nothing of my concern how they keep the customers in the ecosystem.
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Imagine having to use physical media for all your apps and music and movies on your phone or mobile tablets!
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I did enjoy for a while when they gave away codes with 4K blurays as nothing comes close to discs in terms of quality but the convenience of digital also has its advantages.
Same with vinyls where theyâll sometimes include digital versions as well.
For games though it honestly has no advantages whatsoever. The only system for which I own physical games is switch and thatâs because I donât trust Nintendo in the long term, having lost my purchases on Wii, Wii U and 3DS. Or at least, not being able to carry them forward and them closing their digital stores.
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Weâre in 2025. I think it looks like Xbox is going to go early with new hardware in 2026. Iâve already started working overtime, ready for the new console. Iâll be on the CNC machine this Saturday with thoughts of Iâm doing this for the next Box and not the family LOL
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