A rumour has emerged that Microsoft is planning to embrace the all-digital future with an Xbox One S that doesn’t have a disc drive.

Microsoft gurus Thurrott.com say they’re expecting the console to cost less than $200 in stores, and that Microsoft will be launching the console alongside an initiative whereby physical games can be traded in at participating stores for a digital download code.

“Microsoft is moving forward very carefully with this product as it knows that a sizeable portion of its users do prefer to buy physical games and not download them,” says Thurrott, alluding to the controversy that surrounded the reveal of the Xbox One and the game licenses that were going to originally tied to discs.

It could be a cut-price way for fans to get their hands on an Xbox One, although it will mean owners could only purchase games from the Xbox and Microsoft stores. Being a walled ecosystem this would generally mean paying full whack for a game outside of digital sales. Here in the UK, for example, games are up to £20 more expensive to buy digitally than they are in stores. If users could buy a physical game and then trade it in for a digital code, this could nearly circumvent that particular issue.

The other factor is the Xbox Game Pass, which has just passed 200 games. For about £8/$10 a month, players have access to this complete library. All they’d need then is this cut-price console and they’d be able to play all of the Microsoft exclusives, which isn’t a bad deal at all.

What do you think then, is it about time for consoles without disc drives? Do you see this as being a test bed for future Xbox console designs? Let us know!