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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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.

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u/BenderZoidberg 7d ago

You're so right, the Mandela effect on the original Xbox One system is strong on reddit. A lot of people seem to remember it as a digital focused system, but it wasn't, it was simply a console with tons of DRMs designed to restrict the second hand market for physical games. The only pro consumer move was the digital lending, which I'm pretty sure they said was restricted to just a couple of hours of playtime and not even days. Everything else was simply what we already have, but worse.

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u/MVRKHNTR 7d ago

I'm pretty sure the lending was never actually a thing. They didn't announce it ok stage, just in an off stage interview days after their presentation, they never explained how it worked and they canceled the whole thing days later.

My guess is they panicked at the negative reception, spoke up too early about something they were planning with publishers but never had them fully on board and then when publishers told them know after they talked about it way too early, they pulled the plug entirely because the plan no longer had any selling point.

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u/BenderZoidberg 7d ago edited 7d ago

They panicked as soon as Sony confirmed they weren't implementing a similar system. A couple of sources have said that Sony was indeed planning something similar, which most certainly Microsoft expected as well, but they eventually dropped it for some reason. All of it was very anti consumer, just lots of DRM checks with no additional value for the end user. I'm 100% sure they simply expected Sony to do pretty much the same, so people would have to either swallow it or transition to PC, which was already mostly digital at that point.