The Xbox One didn't just come together over night; the console went through numerous stages before it was released on Nov. 22. Recently, Microsoft revealed that at one stage of the development process the company even considered removing the disk drive of the console, which would have forced users to buy all content digitally for the machine.

As Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer explained to OXM, surprisingly enough, Microsoft was discussing removing the disk drive mere months before the console was set to be released.

"Obviously, after the announcement and E3, there was some feedback about what people wanted to change ... There was a real discussion about whether we should have an optical disc drive in Xbox One or if we could get away with a purely disc-less console, but when you start looking at bandwidth and game size, it does create issues," Spencer told OXM.

In the end, Microsoft decided the disk drive needed to stay, but the Xbox One's extremely unpopular trading and selling policies, as well as its always-online policy, had to go instead. Spencer concluded that Blu-rays were necessary for the console. The video game landscape was not ready for a digital-only future yet, he said. 

"So we decided - which I think was the right decision - to go with the Blu-ray drive and give the people an easy way to install a lot of content. From some of those original thoughts, you saw a lot of us really focusing on the digital ecosystem you see on other devices - thinking of and building around that."

One potential factor for the disk drive remaining on the Xbox One: Microsoft's former policies for the console would make much more sense on a console where there's no chance for physical media being used. After all, gamers would have much less use for selling or trading digital games than physical copies, and always being connected to the Internet would help maintain the digital landscape that players would be dealing with.

In any case, while it is strange to think of the Xbox One as having no disk drive, eventually technology will make it feasible for video game companies to only release digital games for users and physical disks will become a thing of the past.