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If you were concerned that the Xbox One S All-Digital was a sign of things to come, relax – Xbox chief Phil Spencer has confirmed that the upcoming next generation console, Xbox Series X (opens in new tab), will include a disc drive. What’s more, Microsoft has no intention of going all digital anytime soon. “I want to give people choice,” Spencer points out in an interview with Gameindustry.biz (opens in new tab). “And right now physical is a choice that millions of people love.”
As a result, Project Scarlett won’t force us to use digital downloads if we don’t want to. While Spencer’s comments make it clear that digital is going to have a role to play in Scarlett’s future (Gamesindustry.biz notes that Spencer “believes digital has certain advantages”), it won’t be to the detriment of discs. This echoes the sentiment laid out by Microsoft Game Studios head Matt Booty when he chatted to Eurogamer (opens in new tab). As Booty revealed, “Scarlett will have an optical disc drive. We know people have an attachment to buying games on disc, to building a collection.” It’s comforting to hear that things won’t change all that much when buying games for the next generation of consoles.
This is a far cry from the Xbox One launch where the motion-tracking Kinect came packaged with many console bundles whether you wanted it or not. As Spencer goes on to explain, they’ve been very careful about their wording this time to avoid confusion. You can see that transparency in the way Xbox talked about backwards compatibility during yesterday’s E3 2019 (opens in new tab) conference – the teaser trailer promised that players will be able to experience “four generations of content like you’ve never seen them before”.
For more details on what makes Microsoft’s next-gen system tick, be sure to take a look at our breakdown of the Xbox Series X specs (opens in new tab).
