Gadgetory

(upbeat music) - Microsoft has just officially revealed the very long rumored new model of the Xbox One, the Xbox One S All-Digital, a system that removes the disc tray in favor of making a digitally focused experience and they were awesome enough to send us one early to check out. The goal of this design is to offer a version of the Xbox that is focused entirely on just the digital experience. In fact, you can see that not only have they removed the disc drive, but they even removed the little slot from the front design, making this a One S that looks a little bit more like the One X, it still has the same dimension as the S, but no longer has a visible disc tray at all. To also emphasize this concept of being all digital, it does come bundled with three digital codes right away, Forza Horizon 3, Minecraft, and Sea of Thieves, which, by the way, I already have all these games, so pay close attention to this video and you might see some of those codes make a little appearance. There's also a deal for people who don't currently have accounts with Game Pass to sign up for three months for Game Pass for one dollar, which is also the deal going on right now for their spring sale, which is a really great price to be able to access all these subscription based games. Now some of you might be looking at this system and wondering, why, why make a system that cuts out what is arguably one of the key features of a system, the ability to play physical games, or even watch physical versions of movies, and the answer is, well 'cause it's the future. Look, I know there is that part in everyone who's grown up gaming where you have this attachment to the nostalgia of physical media, I get it, I am the same way, I still buy most of my games physically, but at the same time I understand that there has been a very heavy shift in the way the gaming industry has been going, and that a lot of people honestly, don't care about that. As the years have gone by, and digital has become more and more accessible and more people are comfortable with the concept of buying something digitally, there's been a very heavy shift towards this idea of people aren't really buying physical games anymore, I mean if you even look at stats comparing physical to digital sales over the last ten years, numbers from 2009 to 2017 basically show a flip in users where, way back then you had 80% people physical, 20% digital and now it's more like 80% digital, 20% physical. Reasons for this are numerous, first off, for a lot of people, digital is a lot more convenient, you don't have to go to a store, you don't have to wait for something to ship, if you wanna play a game the moment it's available, you can preload it on your system and at midnight or 9 p.m. or wherever you are, you can just play it the second that it's now playable. Now, something that has been a bit elephant in the room for this system is the fact that it's $249, which is $50 cheaper than the MSRP of an Xbox One S, but that's not necessarily how much it actually costs to get a One S these days, if you search the right places, you can pretty easily find discontinued versions of the bundle that go for lower than $300, and even lower than $250, with that in mind, it's gonna be interesting to see how as time passes, if deals start to show up for this thing, and it goes down over time, how it's gonna start comparing to those options. Now as for the actual experience of having one of these, it is interesting to see that there's just kind of small differences right away in the experience of having this versus a regular One S, again visually it doesn't have that disc slot, which I do think looks a little bit better, I think the One X pulls it off a little more, because it has that slightly thinner form factor, but I still like the visual of having not anything interrupting the middle here, and just having that one solid color, and I'm really curious if down the line, they start doing other bundles or versions of this, what other colors might start to pop up. It's also interesting when you're actually just physically pick one of these up compared to a One S, because there is a difference in how the weight feels, because it's not just that it's missing a disc drive, but it's because the disc drive normally, just occupies this side of the system, so it almost feels a little more lopsided, which isn't normally gonna be an issue when you just have it set up sitting somewhere, but it is an odd thing to notice the first time you pick one up. So seeing as how the main difference is the removal of the disc drive, I'm curious what the actual weight difference is gonna be, between these two systems, so we'll start with the regular One S, and, that weighs in at six pounds, just under eight ounces, while the All-Digital, is five pounds, seven ounces, so it's a little over a pound lighter. So seeing as how the big difference in the new One S is the removal of the disc drive, I'm curious what the weight difference is gonna be, so we're gonna start off by weighing the regular One S, and see how the All-Digital compares, so to start we'll weigh this one. And we've got 2.9 kilograms, let's see what we have with the All-Digital, let's set this one down, this one, and 2.4 kilograms, that's a whole half kilogram off, that's pretty noticeable. So to see if there's anything different about the actual inside of this, which I suspect it really is just gonna be a whole One S with the drive ripped out, we're gonna open it up. So the first step is to void our warranty, yeah so normally the disc drive would be right under here, but this looks different from how it normally would. And there's just a big ol' empty space, where the drive used to be. Yeah, so they reinforced with this bit right here, to make sure it still feels strong, but it's just a big empty space. This model also ships with a one terabyte hard drive, which has basically become the standard for a lot of current models of the Xbox One, and even of competing systems, now with stuff that's preinstalled and the actual software of the system itself, this really leaves you with about just under 800 gigs to work with for games to install on the system. Of course, if you ever want more storage, than that one terabyte, you do have the option of using external hard drives that you just plug into one of the USB ports, or if you wanna go really extra, rip the system open and replace it with your own. And again, I get it, there's benefits and reasons to wanting to have things physically, I'm the same way, I still buy a lot of games physically when I can, but it's just not the way a lot of the market's going, and this isn't something that's being hardcore forced on everyone just yet, I mean, this isn't replacing the One S, this is another option to the One S, if you don't care about physical games at all, and you just wanna buy all your stuff digitally, that's what the All-Digital is for, if you still want physical games, well they're still selling and producing those regular versions of the One S and One X if that's what you want. But I think this is a very clear sign of something that Microsoft's been doing a lot the last couple years and that it's another market test to see how much people really care about this option if they'd rather just save the money to have a no disc system, and this all comes back to what I think our tests for what the next generation of systems are going to look like, and we've talked a lot about the idea of a streaming focused system that's a cheaper option that doesn't have anything internally in it at all, it's just a way to play games over the internet, but there's also the comparison of, if there's multiple new models of this next generation system, maybe there's an option that is just a digitally focused one and then the pro one that costs more, kinda like here with the One X, is gonna be one that includes a disc drive, and this isn't the first time this idea's been messed with before either, in fact, PlayStation did this before with their PSP system, where they had the regular PSPs that had the UMD disc things but then, as an alternative model, they eventually released that did develop a cult audience was the PSP Go, where because it didn't have to worry about having that reading technology, it was a lot more compact and had this flip design that was a really cool change. The debate of physical versus digital media has been going on for a long time, especially with video games in particular, and part of that argument's always been, well, yes there's the merits of one or the other, but at some point, physical is just going to die off in exchange for the digital, and when is that gonna happen, is that gonna be this next generation? I don't think so, not 100% at least, I think there's still going to be physical options out there but they're going to be less and less focused on, and eventually the way they're gonna get people used to this is by offering these kind of cheaper, all digital options. Oh, and I almost forgot, the new Xbox One S All-Digital will be releasing in just under a month, on May 7th.