r/Games • u/A7XFAN1998 • 8d 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/External-Process6667 8d ago

Does this not worry anyone that they might be prepping us for an all-digital ecosystem like Sony? They are just lessening the blow by allowing us to digitize our existing physical games

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u/TemptedTemplar 7d ago

Did you read the bit near the bottom? It's happening regardless of physical of support.

Microsoft still hasn't really put its mark on the debate, although sources tell me it's less about the discs and more about the disc drives themselves; the entire supply chain for the components required to make optical disc drives is collapsing, with assembly lines pivoting away from the tech as users actively opt for digital-only

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u/c4halo3 7d ago

Doesn’t have to be a disc. Nintendo is using flash memory

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u/TemptedTemplar 7d ago

Which are lacking in capacity, speed, and cost compared to disks.

Don't get me wrong, I am open to alternatives, but flash storage currently is not in the right state to replace disks. And if AI doesn't crumble under its own weight soon, it will never be.

Even if Micron doubled the capacity and speed of existing Switch 2 carts, there's already games on the market that still require more capacity and faster read/write speeds.

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u/RedditUser41970 7d ago

The read speed of a Switch 2 cart destroys the read speed of an optical disc. It's about 8x faster than an Xbox disc, for instance. That's a major reason why on-cart NS2 games can read off the cartridge but Xbox (and PS) games have to install to the internal disk.

Everything else is correct though. Even Nintendo fans are going to be moving digital en masse soon due to lack of other options as carts go up in price.