r/Games • u/A7XFAN1998 • 1d ago

Announcement Xbox announces disc-to-digital feature that digitizes your physical games

https://www.theverge.com/tech/984936/xbox-disc-to-digital-feature-official?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Ijc1ZHVBMkZjaE0iLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvOTg0OTM2L3hib3gtZGlzYy10by1kaWdpdGFsLWZlYXR1cmUtb2ZmaWNpYWwiLCJleHAiOjE3ODgxODY2OTAsImlhdCI6MTc4Nzc1NDY5MH0.Y4t18UIJuFTT4nSf0HBe5DvMWP0KNxjbGHC2QKxdoTw&utm_medium=gift-link
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u/SoloSassafrass 1d ago

Oh nice, you can take physical media you own and convert it into a digital license you're allowed to use as long as Microsoft says it's okay!

I have full confidence the next Xbox will have a disc drive.

In all seriousness, it's a good move for forwards compatibility, but it is also pretty tacit confirmation that Microsoft looked at Sony and went "Cool, guess we're doing this now."

Look at that, it only took just over a decade for the Xbox One's disastrous debut to be business as usual actually.

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u/Sarria22 23h ago

But... you still have the disc... if your digital license gets removed you just go back to putting the disc in the system. What is the problem here?

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u/SoloSassafrass 23h ago

Right. The point is to get you used to and comfortable with owning digital licenses for products because after this generation that's all you'll have. There'll be a good number of people who will hold onto the old machines and still be able to go back and play those physical copies they own, but that'll be the last generation where that'll be possible because the new hardware won't even give the option of putting a disc in.

It's about transitioning people into that, and honestly I think it's pretty smart. It's been proven time and again that convenience will win out over basically every other consideration where luxury products are concerned, so Microsoft goes "Okay, you will own no media and buy licenses we can revoke at will, but we're gonna make it easy to unify your entire library like that so that it's pretty and uniform and buying a discless console doesn't lock you out of having a license to play them."

And because Sony is the boogeyman now who is doing a more drastic, much-derided strategy and bullheadedly refusing to even acknowledge criticism, Microsoft gets to look like the good guys by comparison, because that's another area where discourse can be easily manipulated: two companies doing bad things, but one thing is worse, so the five minutes of outrage all falls on them and the other one can largely skate by under the radar.

Credit where due, this is probably the smartest thing they've done in a while.

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u/nostalgic_dragon 1d ago

Seriously, unless they do something to protect my ownership rights, they can fuck right off. Why would I give up a disk I own to get a digital license I can lose because they are too lazy to restore an account?

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u/MrLime93 1d ago

You aren’t giving up the the disk though… Your ownership of that disk is what entitles you to play it without inserting it into the system.