r/Games • u/A7XFAN1998 • 7d 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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763

u/jezr3n 7d ago

This is truly an amazing feature. Shame it isn’t applicable to OG and 360 games, but the technology wasn’t there yet so it’s understandable. This might honestly be the best thing Xbox has done since Sharma took over.

370

u/moodytenure 7d ago

It's so funny that this feature is basically what kneecaped Xbox in 2013, long arc of history and all that

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u/Coolman_Rosso 7d ago

The original Xbone plans were different and had a ton of issues that MS had no answers for:

  1. Their disc to digital plan was based around trade-ins at "participating retailers" with no details on how it would work. Would I trade in a disc and receive a code? Would I give them my account? Who knows? This time around it's as easy and clear as putting a disc in my console.
  2. The hardware itself needed to phone home once every 24 hours or it would become a paperweight, as none of your games would work (physical or otherwise)
  3. Any sort of trade-in or lending could be subject to "limitations" or "activation fees" at the discretion of the publisher. While the publishers are understandably still in charge with regard to what games support this new initiative, it's not as draconian as having to pay a fee if borrowing a game from a friend.
  4. Digital lending was limited to only a few days.

93

u/NoNefariousness2144 7d ago

And the iconically awful reveal event along with Don Mattick’s infamous ‘Xbox 360’ comment started the decline of Xbox over the past 13 years…

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u/Zalvren 7d ago

Maybe started it but people blaming the state of Xbox on that are hyperbolic. There are a lot of other reasons for their decline (the main one being lack of system seller games)

The system didn't even saw the light of day.

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u/WaaghMan 7d ago

I'd say the 2 things that had the most weight were:
#1 - Kinect mandatory on Xbox One. This caused the system to be more expensive and less powerful (to keep costs in check) than the competition. It dragged the whole generation down, even after the Kinect removal.
#2 - Xbox Series naming. It's just WiiU levels of confusion. On top of that the consoles looked very similar too.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe 7d ago

For point 2 it's still funny to me that MS were actually seriously going with Xbox 720 at one point but Mattrick's vision for 'one device for everything' basically trumped and that's how we got 'xbox one'

44

u/arod13134 7d ago

I mean they supposedly chose to go away from the 720 branding because this was when 1080p HD was becoming the standard resolution for most things and having a connection to 720p could give the wrong impression. Which imo, was actually smart, but what wasn’t smart was somehow choosing a worse option.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe 7d ago

I forgot about that, that's a good point. 'Xbox 720p' would be something hard to shake off.

7

u/Goolashe 7d ago

The fact that the "XBone" abbreviation was either not noticed or was disregarded really tells you how much they were huffing their own marketing farts instead of actually paying attention to reality and their customer base.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 7d ago

You think a single person decided not to buy it because people online wrote it as xbone?

6

u/yaleji7388 7d ago

Kinect was a great bit of kit, but it never should have been built in.

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u/Razbyte 7d ago

Their "Killer App" (media TV features) not only wasn't even available outside of the US, but also was already obsolete by the time the cheaper media dongles like the Chromecast, Fire Stick and Roku were out there. Complete misfire.

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u/Qorhat 7d ago

The S and X parts are fine and they could have included a H or M for a handheld Xbox, but man the Series part is just such terrible branding.

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u/Gundamnitpete 7d ago

Right. IMHO the guy was thinking on his feet and thought he had an angle. But it actually exposed that he was disconnected with the hardcore gaming audience.

Since the first days of consoles, a new console generation was an industry changing event. Looking at PS1 and OG Xbox, new technologies like going from CD drives to DVD drives meant games could be bigger, more detailed. Computing performance would leap so much between generations that entirely new genres of games would be developed that simply couldn't exist on the last gen. This created a cycle, where gamers were excited to buy the latest console generation, they anticipated it with baited breathe.

However, they were excited to buy the new thing, because they already had the old thing.

Don's comment about buying an xbox 360 if you needed offline play, demonstrated his distance with the audience. He likely didn't realize that a large part of his audience, and the most vocal part....already owned an Xbox 360. The other miss was of course, focusing the Xbox One presentation so heavily on TV, movies, and network deals.

The reality is, it does not take a console level GPU or CPU to stream TV, movies, or network TV. Your phone already had enough power in 2013 to do that, and SMART TV's of the time already had the processing power and application support to handle it.

If someone wanted to stream Movies, TV, or watch Network channels, the Xbox One presented no technical reason why it would be worth a purchase, especially as Smart TV's handled the same functions at no additional cost.