Discless Xbox One would be amazing, too radical move for Microsoft

A discless Xbox One with a 1TB hard drive would be a controversial leap for the console market. But as with most of the bold moves Microsoft originally set out to make, the game industry isn't ready. When a NeoGaf user started leaking Xbox One-related bombshells Wednesday night, alarms must have started going off in Redmond. Microsoft has since come out and confirmed that yes, its first Xbox One dashboard update will indeed come in March, and yes, the company will be releasing its previously employee-only all-white console later this year. The rumors didn't stop there, and ranged from leaked photos of the purported Titanfall bundle to a concise roadmap for the Halo series. But what was most important to the future of Xbox hardware -- and the console market as a whole -- slipped in near the end of the rumor round-ups: that Microsoft was toying with the possibility of releasing an Xbox One with a 1TB hard drive and no optical disc drive for as little as $399. It's a shocking revelation, which Microsoft has conceded contains an element of truth: the company is testing consoles without a Blue-ray drive, reported The Verge. Accelerating the inevitable It's difficult to understate what a discless version of the Xbox One at such a price point -- one that would then reroute all game purchases through the Xbox Live marketplace -- would be for the industry. It's a rosy picture for consumers, meaning games accessible earlier and easier that also run faster on an included drive with twice as much space as the current model. From Microsoft's end, it would be emblematic of the console market's aspirations to transition to the neatly organized ecosystem of Steam. But realistically, while all that sounds great if you happen to have a solid Internet connection, a discless console would effectively enrage the other end of a long-established power-sharing relationship, one between retailers and console makers that's inevitably heading in a direction the video game industry doesn't seem poised to be able to handle at the moment. "This is something that will naturally happen. What's the point of accelerating it?" Michael Pachter, a game industry analyst and managing director at Wedbush Securities, said in an interview with CNET. He also pointed out that pushing digital downloads at the expense of what would essentially be a subsidized console would not provide financial benefits substantial enough to warrant the negative side effects. Furthermore, a discless Xbox One would almost certainly not be carried at stores trying to push the very products it's trying to make obsolete. "I think that if Microsoft doesn't have GameStop pushing its content, it's gong to sell fewer consoles in the long run and it's going to lose a lot of money," Pachter added. And not only would the discless Xbox One be incapable of competing with a more versatile, optical-drive carrying PlayStation 4 at the same price -- especially without the context offered by retailers' in-store sales reps -- it would also carry the potential of a now all-too-familiar PR disaster. "It would demonstrate that Microsoft can afford to release a 1TB Xbox One at $399 with essentially the same production cost as the $499 model with a 500GB HDD and a Blu-ray drive," Pachter outlined in a Webush newsletter update Thursday morning. "That would likely cause gamers to believe that the model with a Blu-ray drive is overpriced, or would cause them to believe that Microsoft is greedy," he added.