Just hours after Sony announced it will stop producing physical PlayStation discs in January 2028, Microsoft has reportedly been testing a feature that could make the coming digital-only future a little less painful.
According to The Verge, Xbox employees have started internally testing a new disc-to-digital feature that would let players turn their existing physical Xbox One and Xbox Series X games into digital entitlements. The feature was previously spotted in the Xbox PC app code back in May under references to “Disc2Digital,” but The Verge now reports that Microsoft is actively working on it.
The idea is fairly simple: insert a supported disc into an Xbox console, install and play the game, and the system grants a digital entitlement tied to that specific disc. In other words, you are not just getting a free permanent digital copy so you can flog the disc on eBay five minutes later. I know you were thinking about it, you sneaky bastard, because I was thinking about it, too.
If you lend or sell the disc, the digital entitlement moves with it. Presumably, this means Xbox will periodically check whether that same disc is being used by another account or console, and revoke your digital entitlement if it is.
That digital version would apparently work much like a normal purchase from the Xbox store. If the game supports Xbox Play Anywhere, it could also be playable on PC and handhelds. If it is available through Xbox Cloud Gaming and you have the required Game Pass subscription, it could be streamed as well.
There are some caveats, though. The Verge says the feature currently only works with Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs, meaning Xbox 360 and original Xbox games are not included. Some Xbox One discs may also be incompatible depending on how and when they were manufactured. Again, I assume this would be something to do with detecting if the disc has been slid into another console. Multi-disc games and console-bundled discs are reportedly supported.
The timing of all this is rather interesting, because Sony has just confirmed that physical disc production for new PlayStation games will end in January 2028. From that point onward, new PlayStation games will only be sold digitally, both through the PlayStation Store and participating retailers. Games released before then will still be unaffected, but Sony has not announced any sort of disc-to-digital scheme for existing physical collections, nor has it said how this all fits into backwards compatibility for whatever comes next.
Sony’s ditching disc-based games by 2028, signaling a digital-only PS6 is on the way. How will Sony handle backwards compatibility moving forward?
That is where Microsoft’s reported plan suddenly looks very important. The Verge notes that Microsoft has not yet fully finalized whether its next-generation Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will include a built-in disc drive. If it does not, then a disc-to-digital system could be the bridge that lets current Xbox owners carry at least some of their physical libraries forward.
It is not a perfect solution, obviously. It still depends on Microsoft’s servers, accounts, licensing systems and whatever compatibility rules the company decides to apply. But compared to Sony simply saying “the discs stop here” and not offering any clear path for people who have spent years building physical libraries, it at least sounds like Microsoft is thinking about the problem before throwing everyone into the digital pit.
Whether that makes Xbox the good guy here is another question entirely. This is still the same industry-wide march toward a future where owning a game increasingly means owning permission to access it right up until that permission gets tossed in the bin because somebody sneezed the wrong bloody way. But if discs are going away regardless, then giving players a way to preserve their existing collections is the bare minimum companies should be offering.
And right now, based on what has been announced and reported, Xbox might be the only one even trying.
However, it’s worth noting that the latest Windows Central says the next Xbox will also be ditching the disc drive. Not shocking news in the slightest, but still.
