Will Scorpio have a disk drive at all - since X1 did not at first?

I got the physical disc versions for The Sims 4 and Cities Skylines last year, and when I inserted the disc in my laptop, it referred me to Steam or EA launcher. So no longer require discs. So agree with this comment:

Physical Media for PC is pretty much dead though. Want a PC game? Go to Steam, Origin or Uplay, want software? In most cases now you need to go to the publisher's website.

But I do think they really need to include a disc drive. Xbox Live still charges way too much compared to disc versions which retailers sell. And this is a very well known fact. Compare prices using currency conversion between US/UK/Australia/NZ. And I have
a feel that Microsoft wants to run a console which can do more than just play games, even though games remain a forte. Many people still use physical media for games and videos than you may think.

I even complained to Xbox Support why Recore was selling for NZ$79.40 when in Australia they're selling it for NZ$49.99 about. And when NZ$1 = Australian 97 cents, it would be like paying Australian $77 for Recore. Also, there was a pricing error where on
one page of xbox.com it said NZ$59.99 and on the buy page, NZ$79.40. The following day, they dropped the price to NZ$58. Well at least I helped make sure other NZ'rs don't get ripped off as this is suppose to be a cheap game. Xbox Support apologized for the
price discrepancy and were going to report it to Microsoft and they did, because the next day the price was dropped. GST is 15% in NZ, but even then, it doesn't excuse for there to be a very big gap between digital and disc version games.

Pro's about digital off XBL is no need to worry about physical media, and some games are part of Xbox Play Anywhere, you can play it on more devices (Xbox Scorpio, Windows 10). I really think they're trying to branch out to PC's and other devices including
smartphones aka Xbox Smartglass. They're bringing Xbox to more devices, which I think is a good idea. And there's like no limit on how many times you can download it or expiration date (like 12/24 months).

If they're going to make a disc free console than they are going to have to stop selling digital games at £50 - £60. Only reason I still buy disc versions is because most of the time it's cheaper, for example Mafia 3 is £55 on the store but I've pre-ordered
it for £35 from Amazon.

But I must admit I am starting to prefer digital games now, they've made me even more lazier in the fact I find it a chore of getting up to put the disc in lol.

I don't think they are dying at all and all of your points are relevant and realistic. I'm also quite sure that no-one wants to loose their entire library if their account is banned regardless of why it was. I'll come right out and say that piracy is also
a problem when the older gen gamers such as myself don't feel like paying for data.

Why do people think the physical games are a dying format. LOL.

Just do a search for EA investor reports and check out their revenue for 2016, any quarter you like. And actually have a good read of their financial figures. or here if you are lazy. lol
investor.ea.com/results.cfm

Last year Digital Sales finally beat Physical sales, and yes it was in the news, but it is not in the way that a few people here seem to think. Let me give you the break down on the final page of the Q2 Financial Year 2016 Report

Total GAAP Net Revenue

Packaged games and good - 58%

Full game Downloads - 8%

Extra Content - 17%

Subscriptions, advertising and other - 7%

Mobile - 10%

Total - 100%

In which world is digital vs physical taking over. EA digital platform includes everything they do digitally. Full games, DLC, Subscription, Fifa Packs, Mobile gaming, In Game Transactions, PC Gaming, ETC

Their physical Section, probably (And this is a guess, probably includes Merchandise, but don't quote me lol)

We have had this discussion before but i will state it again. Physical for console gaming is not going anywhere, anytime soon, for several reasons.

1. Price, nearly every country has physical is always cheaper than retail, especially at launch and drops a lot quicker as a game gets old. This is down to the closed marketplace that console companies control. Whereas physical has to compete in a national
market of many retailers

2. Game sizes do not suit the current internet structure around the world, with Americas known ISP caps and slow internet downloads, and long wait times for downloads for people in countries that have bad internet infrastructure. Or just plain bad servers

3. The ability to sell a game, once it is complete or rubbish, or just to trade in to get some money back. This is a plus to most people, especially those that look to get a new game on the back of one the have finished.

And before we get into the digital debate and the "EVERYTHING ELSE HAS GONE DIGITAL" debate, lets look at that.

Books. No matter what the book size, you will rarely, unless it has pictures, find one over 2meg

Music. Again, it does not matter what the song is. Size of song is dictated by kbs rate. So no matter the song, the file size is virtually the same if the quality is the same.

Films. Again, Film sizes do not vary much from Film to Film. Originally normal DVD's would fit to about 700mb with little loss of quality. Blu-Rays, normally if streamed, you can get away with about 3gb and still have a good technical picture. (Although
it is always crisper of the disc). And now we had UHD (4k - H.265 compression Technology) is going at about 5Gb.

Games. This is virtually the only media that is not constrained by a specific bit rate, but by how much the developer wants to put into a game. Yes we have compression in games, for music and graphics. But it only can do so much, especially when you are
talking about some seriously massive games. Just go back to 90s. The amiga could run a game off a 720kb disc. The Snes would fit onto a 1.4HD Disk (Although it was cartridge based). Then the CD era came, and we had 700mb games, and even 4 disc games like FF7,
That's 2.8gb on the PS1. The Xbox 360 - Blue Dragon, 3 discs. That's 13Gb. And now we have Blu-Ray with Games upto 50GB and beyond with an extra Download. Take Halo MCC for example.

And now we have 100GB discs, I don't know, if with 4k and now 8k round the corner, gaming sizes will peak and flatten out, but they show no signs of currently doing so. For the small minorty, Downloading will always be fine, and easy (120Meg U/L fibre here,
but i still buy physical - love cases. LOL) but for the majority, buying a disc, and inserting it in and just waiting a few minutes for it to install, is still the easiest way to go.

Thanks for explaining, Obsessive Power.

Just thinking MicroSD would be a source for installning on hdd, through an iso image of a BD.

Not running games directly.

A BD drive is rather slow, and games are read into memory preparing the scenes to be run.

I installed on my 360 disk 2 from GTA V on a usb drive, because it was recommended to avoid some jumping on hdd that would be to slow, it was recommended as a workaround on early releases at least(maybe fixed now). And there are different speed such usb
drives as well. This was running games directly from media.

But just allow installer run from MicroSD, why not?

It could be a standard developed, if not already - that emulate BD drive just as thumbdrives on usb emulate hdd.

I looked at bit now on usb BD drives - and there are plenty to choose from.

But not sure if UHD anything yet - it had something called BDXL, which 128GB space on some disk. Not sure what this is?