Today, Microsoft announced that players will soon be able to turn their physical Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S discs into digital games. It's a good idea, but even this initial announcement has some red flags that are leaving me nervous as a physical game collector.
"Most XBOX One and XBOX Series X disc-based games support this new feature," the company says in its announcement. "Players can claim a digital entitlement by inserting a supported disc into an XBOX One or XBOX Series X console and launching the game. Once the entitlement is claimed, you can experience the benefits of digital, including XBOX Play Anywhere and XBOX Cloud Gaming where supported, while your physical disc continues to work exactly as it always has."
The feature will enter testing for Xbox Insiders on August 31. No information has yet been provided on when it will roll out to all Xbox users. "We’re starting with thousands of titles, and we’ll continue to add more over time," the publisher says.
In theory, this is a great feature. It offers both the convenience of digital games and the ownership rights of physical ones. While the official announcement isn't specific on this point, The Verge reports that the digital entitlement is tied to the disc itself. That means that you'll be free to trade or resell your disc games even after you've claimed a digital version, and that entitlement will simply carry over to the new owner.
As much as I enjoy the little rituals associated with physical media, that's not why I've argued that PlayStation's decision to end discs is bad for everyone. When you purchase a digital game, you're not actually buying anything – you're simply acquiring a license that can be revoked at any time. Xbox's disc-to-digital plan gives you something you can actually own tied to a digital game. In that regard, this is excellent.
Your physical game library is more than a collection of discs. It holds years of memories and stories worth preserving. Starting next week, XBOX Insiders can unlock a digital entitlement for supported physical games. We’ll start with thousands of titles and add more as we can. pic.twitter.com/XATsa8sjBtAugust 26, 2026
But the red flags start with the fact that "most" games will be supported at launch. What's stopping the entire library from being supported at once? Is it a technical issue, or a licensing one? The fact that Xbox is vague on this point – and makes no promises that the entire Xbox library will eventually be supported – leads me to believe that this effort is tied to the same sorts of licensing issues that have hampered the platform's backward compatibility efforts.
Original Xbox and Xbox 360 games have to be whitelisted by their original publishers for backward compatibility on modern Xbox consoles. If the same is true of this disc-to-digital plan, then I'm afraid the whole thing has been cut off at the knees. What's to stop a publisher from simply barring disc owners from digitizing an old version of a game when they have a new remaster to sell? And if obscure titles with inattentive license-holders can't get whitelisted for digitization, then this is essentially useless as a preservation push.
"This is part of our broader commitment to game preservation," Xbox says. "As technology, devices, and distribution continue to evolve, preserving access to the games people own matters more than ever."
That's a great sentiment, but I'm afraid Xbox might have a different definition of "preservation" than I do. That talk of evolving distribution and preserving access suggest, to me, that this is merely a step toward an all-digital Project Helix. Unlike Sony, Microsoft has not yet announced the future of its own disc manufacturing, but this disc-to-digital plan does feel like a Trojan Horse for an all-digital future.
Admittedly, promising disc owners a future is better than PlayStation's handling of this whole situation so far. But unless either company is willing to keep making discs – or, better yet, actually offer digital owners the same rights that disc buyers have – I'm afraid that none of this is good enough.
