PlayStation plans to end production of new game discs in 2028, which almost certainly means that PS6 will have no disc drive. What, then, of Project Helix? Xbox boss Asha Sharma won't say for sure one way or another whether the next-gen console will have a disc drive, but as she emphasizes the need to make the box affordable, it doesn't take much reading between the lines to think we're looking at another all-digital console.
Asked by the BBC whether Project Helix would have a disc drive, Sharma did not give a definitive answer. "This next generation, we have to be thinking about efficiency and affordability alongside performance," she responded.
Certainly, affordability is the biggest concern around next-gen gaming machines right now, and given the tech pricing apocalypse that the rapidly expanding AI bubble (one Microsoft itself has a lot of responsibility in inflating) has brought us, fears of $1,000 consoles are not unfounded. Disc drives do add a not-insignificant amount to a console's manufacturing cost for a feature not every player uses, hence why even the PS5 Pro offers disc drives only as an optional add-on.
"All of the industry needs to start to innovate on affordability and efficiency. That is something that we have not had to do [previously]," Sharma says. "But with the crisis that's currently happening in hardware and components, it is absolutely something all of us need to be thinking about and innovating on and giving people more choice in terms of how they play their console and how they purchase their console."
Still, Xbox wants to offer an olive branch to disc enthusiasts with a feature that'll let you turn your Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S discs into digital games. "I know players love physical media, and I know there's a lot of benefits in digital media, and I want to make sure people have a choice," Sharma says, acknowledging that "there are stacks of games on everybody's shelves."
But the disc-to-digital program might just be an effort to ensure that Project Helix – assuming it's digital-only – will still have a way to offer backwards compatibility, a feature Xbox has an admirably front-and-center approach to. "We've long pioneered backwards compatibility and so you'll continue to see that as we go forward in the generations," as Sharma puts it.
Whether the next set of generations will have discs of their own, though, remains to be seen.
Sony reminds PlayStation users they don't own anything: "The software is licensed to you, not sold."
