The Xbox One S All-Digital’s Pricing Makes No Sense

Microsoft has finally revealed their Xbox One S All Digital console, which now has a release date of May 7th and will ship for £199.99 in the UK and $249.99 in the US. 

Xbox’s Major Nelson has confirmed that the Xbox One S All-Digital is designed to be $50 cheaper than their standard Xbox One S, but there’s a problem, it isn’t less expensive than the 4K Blu-Ray enabled version. In the UK, Xbox One S 1TB consoles can be bought new for less than £192 at both GAME and Amazon, albeit without the S All-Digital’s 3-game bundle. 

In effect, Microsoft has released a “cheaper” console that isn’t and has denied users of this console access to physical copies of games, which are often cheaper than their digital counterparts, especially if gamers make use of pre-owned or borrowed games. In the long run, gamers who are willing to use non-digital copies of games will save money, especially if they still want to play their original Xbox and 360 disks in backwards compatibility mode.  

If they wanted to market their Xbox One S All Digital, which is now known as the SAD edition on social media, they needed to release the console with a price tag that was lower than the console’s standard version. Yes, the game bundle helps, but every game included is part of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, making all of them accessible at a low price.