Nowadays, these consoles come with impressive specifications while saving you $100 or more from purchasing a console with a disc drive. But are they worth buying in 2022? Here are a few things to consider before your purchase.

What Is a Digital-Only Console?

Digital-only consoles don’t have disc drives and rely on the consumer to purchase games from an online store, which they then keep on the console. These devices are dimensionally smaller, as they don’t need to waste space with a disc drive or another physical game slot. This is a big plus for portability if it’s a handheld console.

Back in 2009, PlayStation released a digital-only edition of its popular handheld, the PlayStation Portable; the PSP Go. The PSP Go was ahead of its time with a smaller, more portable design and plenty of interesting accessories such as an AV cable to view games on a television, it supported DualShock 3 controllers, as well as expandable storage on top of the 16GB of flash memory already available.

Although PSP Go games were only a few hundred megabytes each, it took a long time to download games, and consumers weren’t used to purchasing games solely through an online store.

Digital-only consoles such as these have their pros and cons, but those who make the switch seem to love their systems.

Why You Should Choose a Digital-Only Console

There are many pros to purchasing a digital-only console over one with a disc drive.

One pro of digital-only consoles is the price. At the time of writing, the two most popular digital-only consoles are the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and the Xbox Series S. Sony’s PlayStation 5 Digital Edition is $100 less than the disc drive PS5, at $399, and comes with the same performance specifications, including the 825 GB SSD and powerful GPU and CPU.

The Xbox Series S is an even better deal at $299—$200 less than the Xbox Series X. One big difference here is that the Series S outputs games up to 1440p, while the Series X can output games up to 8K. The Series X also has better processing power and larger storage space.

If you don’t have a large collection of physical games from a previous console, and already love and rely on game streaming services such as Xbox Game Pass, then a digital-only console would be perfect for you. This means no wasted space in the entertainment center on physical game cases, nor needing to sell games when you’re tired of playing them.

What to Think About Before Buying a Digital-Only Console

Although there are many pros to gaming on a digital-only console, there are a few things you should keep in mind before diving in.

1. Hard Drive Space

When you buy a digital-only console, you’ll download every single game you want to play, which makes the amount of memory available on the console crucial. For example, the Xbox Series S has a 512GB SSD, but the operating system takes up around 148GB of space, leaving 364GB available for games.

This may sound like a decent amount of storage, but this realistically will give you around five games to keep on your system at once. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will take up 136GB of your available space on an Xbox Series S, so your hard drive space will fill up fairly quickly.

Although the Series S supports expandable storage, Seagate’s 1TB storage expansion card costs an astounding $219.99, which is almost the price of the console itself. Realistically, the Series S and other digital-only consoles with similarly sized hard drives are best suited for those who don’t play multiple games at once, and just keep a couple of their favorites downloaded until they want to play something new.

2. Which Game Streaming Service Will You Use?

One of the best parts of gaming on a digital-only console nowadays is being able to take advantage of fantastic game-streaming services.

Xbox owners get to take advantage of Xbox Game Pass, which gives gamers access to unlimited games available on the service for $14.99 per month. Game Pass even releases some of its most popular titles, such as Halo Infinite, for free.

This is a great deal for those who don’t want to spend $60 on a triple-A title like this at launch, but want to experience playing it as soon as possible with the rest of the gaming community.

PlayStation offers a similar service. PS Now and PS Plus both give you access to a large variety of PlayStation titles.

You’re able to purchase games at full price from an online store without needing to pay for one of these subscription services, however the price will add up quickly if you buy even one game per month. With game streaming services, you can try titles out, and if you don’t like them, you’re free to uninstall them without feeling like you wasted money.

New games also arrive on these services monthly, so you’re likely to never get bored nor need to browse a physical video game store ever again.

3. Backwards Compatibility

For those who have an extensive collection of physical games from last generation consoles, switching to a digital-only console seems pretty daunting.

PlayStation has attempted to remedy this with PS Now. Gamers can subscribe to PS Now for $10 per month, giving them access to PS4, PS3, and PS2 titles. This is great for nostalgia, as well as future proofing the digital-only edition console for years to come.

Sony consistently adds new games from each generation of PlayStation consoles, giving players hundreds of hours of enjoyment and no need for their physical games anymore.

Xbox owners who want to play games from each generation of Xbox can do so with Xbox Game Pass, which gives players access to Xbox One games as well as a handful of games from the Xbox 360 and original Xbox.

Although digital-only edition consoles attempt to build value with the ability to play all these games, this doesn’t fix the problem for those of us who have a comprehensive collection of our favorite physical games from the previous generation. There’s no guarantee that the game subscription service will offer the titles you want, and thus your physical games will still need a place on your shelf.

4. Prices of Physical Games

One thing to keep in mind is how the prices of physical games can vary.

For example, subscribing to Xbox Game Pass gives you access to a tremendous variety of games for a low monthly fee, but what if there’s a game you just found out about that you’d love to play, but isn’t available on the service? Your only option will be to buy it on Xbox’s online store.

Another situation that can arise is with preorders. Preordering a digital game may provide you with some exclusive DLC, but preordering the physical edition will come with more interesting physical perks such as an art book and other limited edition goodies for fans of the franchise for a similar price.

Buying a physical game also means you own it, and you’re able to sell it or lend it to a friend: things that you can’t do with digital games. Things like these are more important to some people than others, but it’s good to keep in mind.

Should You Buy a Digital-Only Console?

Now is as good a time as any to jump into the digital-only console market. Game streaming subscription services are a fantastic deal and video game companies know how important it is to keep owners of its digital edition consoles happy.

Lately, digital-only next generation consoles, such as the Xbox Series S, are available to purchase while their disc drive counterparts are not, and may not be for months to come. They’re more affordable, smaller, and are a great addition to home entertainment centers.

If you’re looking for your next console and all the above sounds perfect for you, then now is the time to buy.