In the wake of Sony's shift to a digital-only ecosystem within the next year, Xbox have today announced a surprising scheme. Aiming to offer physical buyers the same benefits as digital ownership, including Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming, the company is set to hand out digital licences to owners of physical Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs. Details are a little slim at the moment, but what we do know is that thousands of title will be supported out of the gate, with each disc providing "one revokable digital licence". It is also confirmed that redeeming this digital licence will not affect your ability to use the physical disc, with it continuing to function as normal.

The press release makes a point of stressing this as a part of a broader commitment to game preservation, potentially suggesting a continued support for physical media in the coming console generation. This new feature is set to go live for Xbox Insiders on August 31st, with sign ups for the programme possible via the Xbox Insider Hub app.

Source

 

[Ambers_Crimson_8K]

I have shelves full of games from the original Xbox to the Xbox One - all my Series X games are 100% digital.
And just got a 20 TB Western Digital Black, ready to fill up when this goes live.

I think only Xbox One and Series X games can be copied for now.

And they will add OG Xbox and 360 Later.

I'm a Xbox Insider, so I need that notification.

 

[Renos44]

Its nothing new, typical microshit to fail at taking advantage of the competitions fuck ups.

Ohhh let's waste money giving you a dud disc to be forced to download digital.

Tho tbf its just what its been doing already, and its famboys praise as if its new.

Backwards compatibility was just this, its use your disc to download the game, ignored the data off the disc, wasn't even used.

And the amount of times my shitbox would fail to play a game,asking if I owned it, if so, to re download it.... when its a disc.

Essently its just like the Datel Action Replay Max, insert disc, it detects the game ID, takes you to the game cheats

But this digitally downloads....

I can see microshit fuck it up, as they still fail to make its store and AIO store considering shitbox is windows with a custom front.

Why its windows app can't even communicate properly and list console/pc games.

To be fair to Microsoft The xbox one isn't really up the task of straight up emulating 360 games. So they opted to do a half recompile half emulate approach. This also allows for performance patches on some other neat things they did. Thus the data on the disc itself is worthless on the xbox one as it lacks the proper exe, shaders etc.

The downside of course was this process had to be done a per game basis and well the team was disbanded by MS before they could get through every 360 game also some publishers said no to MS touching their stuff or no longer existed as a publisher.

As well as having to download 360 games.

 

[Dontuuch17]

I feel uneasy about how the license is termed, but perhaps it'll be palpable if there's no online check ins.

 

[NitroShell]

View attachment 587846​

In the wake of Sony's shift to a digital-only ecosystem within the next year, Xbox have today announced a surprising scheme. Aiming to offer physical buyers the same benefits as digital ownership, including Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming, the company is set to hand out digital licences to owners of physical Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs. Details are a little slim at the moment, but what we do know is that thousands of title will be supported out of the gate, with each disc providing "one revokable digital licence". It is also confirmed that redeeming this digital licence will not affect your ability to use the physical disc, with it continuing to function as normal.

The press release makes a point of stressing this as a part of a broader commitment to game preservation, potentially suggesting a continued support for physical media in the coming console generation. This new feature is set to go live for Xbox Insiders on August 31st, with sign ups for the programme possible via the Xbox Insider Hub app.

Source

everyone is praising this while Sony is doing the same thing (kinda) you lose rights when you transfer your disc to digital rights.

 

[The Catboy]

There is. Other people can't use it while it's linked to your account.

That's fine by me.

Sounds like they are just gently easy people into activation codes, again. You know, the thing they originally wanted to do

 

[Sir Tortoise]

If there is no requirement for online verification to use the disc, surely that would allow for two people to use the same game, so long as the second person with the disc never connects online.

That would be too much trust to be mainstream, though, you can't just sell the disc on that promise because the buyer could just lie and effectively take the digital version from you too.

Would only work for a few people who can locally share, but do I trust Microsoft to let that slide rather than taking an opportunity to turn this "game preservation" scheme into a method of killing off physical discs by stealth when the servers go down?

 

[purple_bandit]

The amount of people bitching and complaining about this is actually insane. You literally cannot please you people.

Got rid of discs completely? Bitch and moan.

Keep discs, allow trading/lending/reselling and allow your entire physical library to be accessible digitally? Bitch and moan.

Holy FUCK. You lot are impossible to please.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Sounds like they are just gently easy people into activation codes, again. You know, the thing they originally wanted to do

Yes, that's true but this is a feature I wanted to see being used years ago by Sony which never happened.

 

[Skelletonike]

This is pretty great.
Now I feel kinda bad that I sold my Series X and kept my PS5.
Who would have guessed things would turn like this 3 months ago?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The question I bet is on everybody's mind right now:
Can you buy a physical game, redeem the digital code and then resell the physical copy?

They say you can use the physical copy as normal but there's no way they don't put heavy restrictions on this, right?
Like associating the disc with the account used to redeem the code and then requiring that account to be signed in for the disc to work.

What about offline play? Say you don't have an internet connection and you insert a disc for the first time, will the console need to authenticate with servers to give you permission to play the disc, to make sure that this isn't a disc that has been resold?

If it really is two individual copies of the game that aren't tied together in any way after activation, this system is completely broken and it's going to be abused hard. I won't complain about half price games though. Buy a game, sell the disc for half the original price, or buy a second hand disc if you prefer the physical copy. Sounds like a win win for consumers.

 

[Technicmaster0]

The question I bet is on everybody's mind right now:
Can you buy a physical game, redeem the digital code and then resell the physical copy?

I don't see them changing how discs work. You put it into a console (online or offline as long as it doesn't require a day1 patch) and it will work. Everything else will lead to lawsuits and very bad marketing.
Then the question will be in which ways it's required to be online. We'll have to wait until people who got their hands on this feature tested it.
I can imagine that you need to be online to access the "virtual disc" and that you need to be online to tie a physical disc as "virtual disc" to your account. I can also imagine that a console that reads a new disc will synchronize with the Microsoft servers as long as it's online. That way they can check if someone else with an online console used the disc which is tied to your account and then they can untie it. Of course there could be 2 copies beeing used if you sold the disc and the other other user stays offline, but you would have to enforce somehow that the user stays offline. That's not probable for second hand sales.

But even with online restrictions, it would be a very cool feature and people who complain about it seem to be stuck in their anti microsoft hate. As far as I guess (because everything else will lead to lawsuits), discs will to continue to work just the way they are. But in addition to that, you can tie your physical disc to your account (that may have to be online to play that virtual disc). You could store your physical media collection somehwere else or even use physical copies on digital only consoles if you e.g. have an all digital Series X and a One X that you put your disc into. If you don't have internet, you simply have to go back to the original disc so nothing is lost. Personally I'm really hyped about this feature.
In theory you could even put the disc into the console, tie it to your account and then destroy the disc so that you will keep the digital license forever and no one can take it away. Of course that's nothing that I'd do, but it might be an appealing option for some users. With the risc of the feature beeing discontinued in the future.

 

[Skelletonike]

The question I bet is on everybody's mind right now:
Can you buy a physical game, redeem the digital code and then resell the physical copy?

They say you can use the physical copy as normal but there's no way they don't put heavy restrictions on this, right?
Like associating the disc with the account used to redeem the code and then requiring that account to be signed in for the disc to work.

What about offline play? Say you don't have an internet connection and you insert a disc for the first time, will the console need to authenticate with servers to give you permission to play the disc, to make sure that this isn't a disc that has been resold?

If it really is two individual copies of the game that aren't tied together in any way after activation, this system is completely broken and it's going to be abused hard. I won't complain about half price games though. Buy a game, sell the disc for half the original price, or buy a second hand disc if you prefer the physical copy. Sounds like a win win for consumers.

I'm assuming it will be something like a license check. You may need to reinsert the CD every X days or the console asked to check in with the servers when you input a CD. I don't believe Xbox discs have identifiers like Nintendo does, so it may be a sort of temporary key.

 

[BigOnYa]

I don't believe Xbox discs have identifiers like Nintendo does

But they do, they have unique ID's embed on the Disk itself, going back to the Xbox One days/ disks.

 

[Skelletonike]

But they do, they have unique ID's embed on the Disk itself, going back to the Xbox One days/ disks.

Then that makes the whole thing much easier.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I'm assuming it will be something like a license check. You may need to reinsert the CD every X days or the console asked to check in with the servers when you input a CD. I don't believe Xbox discs have identifiers like Nintendo does, so it may be a sort of temporary key.

That would be the worst way to do it. I have no interest in a digital game that requires physical DRM to work. That's not much better than game key cards. Digital is purely a convenience thing for me.