I would be extremely surprised if at least one upgraded model of the Xbox doesn't ship with a disc drive. It would completely alienate a section of their user-base that want a more powerful box and care about owning physical media. They also made this mistake before with the Xbox One - which Spencer himself has mentioned as a key reason why there's such a gap in sales volume between XBS/X and PS5 - so to make the same mistake again would be doubly confusing.
Edit: just seen this story corroborated by multiple outlets, so this may well be the real deal. And if so, super disappointing and fucking duuuumb. As the Xbox Series X OG console becomes more and more the outlier, what are the chances that publishers will just stop producing discs for retail completely? So basically, really piss off your early adopters. I own a Series S at the moment, but I'm more likely to just switch to PS5 Pro model when it comes round instead of stick with the Xbox Series consoles.
Bins? You guys don't know how lucky you have it!
And as a bonus we get to see everyone's manky rubbish scattered across the street on a windy, rainy day - what joy!
Welcome to Bridgend, Wales. ;-)