Earlier in the year, Microsoft announced a disc to digital licensing change that sounded superb but I was initially cynical. It turns out to be exactly what I hoped - less some minor grumbles. Essentially, if you own an Xbox One / Series game on physical disc, you can insert the disc in a console (obviously one with a disc drive) and claim the digital license of the game. (More info: https://support.xbox.com/en-CA/help/games-apps/game-setup-and-play/disc-to-digital-licensing-on-xbox)
Obviously my thought was I could just insert a game disc, get the digital license and pass that disc onto a friend or even sell it on. Hell, I could even buy the latest game, claim a digital license, and return it. But MS have thought of this (a solution I'm not actually disappointed about) and it turns out that the optical discs are serialised. So if you claim the digital license but give the disc to a friend, and they load it, the license is revoked.
But it is really good news and solves quite a number of problems. The first is the problem inherit with all physical media (and even the drives/mechanisms to read them) - wear and tear. If you claim the digital license, in theory, you can now destroy the disc (I don't advocate this obviously) but cloud-based digital licenses are arguably more resilient to entropy in the universe compared to optical media. Tick.
The other benefit is that physical games, especially if like me, you're indifferent to having new or pre-owned games, can be substantially cheaper than in the digital stores. I pick up absolute bargains on Facebook marketplace, from carboots and even CEX etc.Sometimes I've picked up the physical game for £3 when on sale, it still around £20 on the marketplace. Us physical-disc gamers (actually I have only 30 discs or so c.f. 1,400 digital titles on Xbox) have now hit parity - we can leave reviews on a store and even swap titles without fumbling around for a disc.
The other benefit is Microsoft's existing "Xbox Anywhere" or "Play Anywhere" scheme where if you own a title on Xbox, you can play it on PC via the Xbox PC application. I've always found that to be a surprisingly generous program and now even more so; but I doubt there will be many titles, where buying even a used Xbox console disc for a title to play on PC will be cheaper that the other PC marketplaces or third-part PC resellers like Humble Bundle.
The really big benefit of this disc to digital, is a phrase that ChatGPT has convinced me, during several technical projects recently, to pay attention to: Source of Truth. You see, when you're looking at your digital library e.g. in the MS store (via browser/app/console), it is not evident you own the disc. Now by claiming the license from a disc, at least you can see that ownership represented in the store... no buying duplicate copies accidentally. This would be perfect if it wasn't that some discs aren't compatible with the disc to digital programme.
21 of my discs worked flawlessly. (By the way if you want to claim the digital licenses for a batch of discs, ensure you turn off the setting to autoplay discs when they're inserted). It now appears they have digital licenses and a subtle icon on the titles' posters indicate this special type of disc-to-digital license. But a number did fail (SEE list at the end). Maybe this will be like their backwards compatibility programme where more titles are added. Perhaps the whole programme will include Xbox 360 titles as well. But until that point, I can't definitively use the store as my source of truth.I will have a look through CEX's catalogue though and I expect demand for digital discs to increase now.
But all-in-all, this is a superb initiative and is the a surprising quality-of-life update from a platform that gas attracted so much bad press recently.
Games that I tried that are explicitly not supported (no Xbox 360 titles are supported):
- Forza Horizon 3
- Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Outriders
- Dark Souls I-III
- Project Cars 2 (odd because Project Cars worked)
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