Sony might be ducking out of E3 this year, but it looks like Microsoft are keen to attend the LA Expo with the Xbox One in full force, and have a few surprises in store for us.
One such surprise is that Microsoft are planning to unveil a new Xbox One S which doesn’t have a disc drive and only plays digital games, according to a new report from Thurrott.
The tech site hears from unnamed sources that this disc-less system will arrive in 2019, and the choice was driven by Microsoft’s desire to move towards a digital-only future. Bad news for those of you who love a good physical edition, of course.
The second reason behind this move is, apparently, an economic one. Naturally, a disc-less Xbox One would be cheaper to manufacture, so Microsoft can sell it for a lot less. Thurrot reports the console could be around the $200 mark (around £155), maybe even less.
Thurrot speculates that this cheaper Xbox would probably have to lose a few other bells and whistles on top of losing the disc-drive in order to keep the price low, but nothing that would majorly impact the quality of the console.
There’s also talk of Microsoft panning another new Xbox One S model, one which does have a disc drive. This model would be scheduled to release after the disc-less model, again some time in 2019.
These Xbox One S consoles would likely be the last Xbox One models to release before Microsoft unveils and launches their mysterious (and currently unannounced) next-gen device, which is being referred to as Project Scarlett.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.