Xbox Series S

[Voor]

I’m not shopping for an Xbox, but if I were, I’d be VERY tempted—$299 price tag, download only, smallest sized Xbox console ever. I actually like it.

[VideoGameCritic]

But... what would you play on it?

[BlasteroidAli]

But... what would you play on it?

backwards compatible. It will play all Xbox games which work on xbox 1. I have 400 titles in the library.

Plus https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/xbox-series-x-games-list?region-switch=1599697269

[Shapur]

They almost elicited some minor excitement from me until I saw NO DISC DRIVE. So I can’t play any of my current games. Can always play the new Halo or Gears on the One or your PC anyway.

[gamer4life]

They ares still trying to convince everyone to go digital only with the lower price. That way you can always pay $60 for digital games that you can not sell or trade when you are done playing.

[CharlieR]

I wonder if you had a lot of games downloaded to your xbox one, could you transfer them to the series x? or do you have to buy them again? If you could transfer them, this would be a good price, but probably not a lot of games on the xbox one are going to be optimized to work on xbox series x?

[ActRaiser]

I wonder if you had a lot of games downloaded to your xbox one, could you transfer them to the series x? or do you have to buy them again? If you could transfer them, this would be a good price, but probably not a lot of games on the xbox one are going to be optimized to work on xbox series x?

It's tied to your account. If you bought them digitally, you'd be able to download/play them all. I've been an Xbox Live Gold member since it first launched. I think I have something like 200-300 digital games with 24 of them each year being free. Most of them are junk but there are a few jewels in the mix.

[VideoGameCritic]

I think that it's interesting to note that in 10 year, when Microsoft has moved on, these digital only consoles will be worth less than an Atari 2600. Food for thought.

[Retro STrife]

I think that it's interesting to note that in 10 year, when Microsoft has moved on, these digital only consoles will be worth less than an Atari 2600. Food for thought.

Good point. It'll be interesting to see how retro gaming works in the future when consoles go this all-digital route. I think the desire for retro gaming will always be there -- nostalgia is a part of human nature and it's not going away -- but the possibility of retro gaming will be in a state of limbo. It'll largely come down to how these consoles work when the servers go down, and how many hurdles it takes to play the digital games on the console.

One positive example is the Wii -- the games are linked to the console itself, so it's easy to sell the system and all downloaded games remain playable. I've long wondered if there would someday be an ebay market for consoles loaded with these games, with people buying multiple Wiis just to collect all the Wiiware games that can't be played any other way. Digital versions would never be as valuable as physical media, but I could still see a small contingent of retro gamers willing to pay good money for a Wii that has an obscure Wiiware game on it that almost no one ever downloaded.

I'm less optimistic with systems like the Xbox Series S, where the purchase is tied to your Microsoft account. Worse than the low resale value is the concern that many games will be unpreserveable and lost forever when the servers shut down.

[Shapur]

I doubt these games will ever be lost forever. Some enterprising young person will eventually dump the games online and eventually hack the systems to play them. And someday they may even get a working emulator for them on a a PC, in the distant future. The games will be preserved. Their online focused model of play will make a lot of them not very unappealing.

But you can still play Phantasy Star Online all these years later. The fans do what these companies won’t.