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When Xbox announced a new feature last month that lets you digitize existing physical game collections, I immediately thought of the Xbox One. Disc-to-digital seems like a clever new feature for Xbox, perfectly timed as a response to Sony killing PlayStation discs. But the reality is that it has been 15 years in the making and is now a big part of Xbox’s ongoing game preservation efforts.
Ahead of the launch of the Xbox One in 2013, Microsoft made a key decision to uniquely identify discs. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me the company was exploring the idea of true Xbox digital ownership in 2011, including digital gifting, recycling digital games, and the ability to swap discs at retail stores in exchange for a digital version. Some of those original Xbox One plans leaked out online, and many others have remained secret for more than a decade.
Microsoft’s Xbox One launch hinted at some of these ideas, too. The console was originally supposed to be always online, to enable Microsoft’s vision of digital game sharing, and more. Microsoft walked back those plans after a messy and confusing Xbox One launch created a backlash to the always-online requirement. But some of those original digital ideas are now starting to come to life in different ways.
Microsoft’s decision to essentially embed a serial number on the discs that Xbox consoles can read has allowed it to launch disc-to-digital, a method that lets you turn a physical Xbox One disc into a digital copy simply by slotting it into a disc drive. A decision made 15 years ago has resulted in this useful feature and may well lead to true digital ownership in the coming years.
It’s not something Sony can copy, either. Unless the PlayStation maker has been quietly adding metadata to its discs over the years, it will have to find another method to help PS5 owners move their physical collections over to the digital era.
Microsoft thought ahead, not necessarily to disc-to-digital, but just about identifying discs so it was ready for when console games moved into an all-digital era. That era looks like it’s right around the corner, especially now that Sony has announced it’s killing PlayStation discs in 2028. Both Microsoft and Sony also ship digital-only variants of their consoles, and it’s clear from game sales numbers that most titles are purchased digitally these days.
I fully expect Microsoft to follow Sony and eventually scrap Xbox discs, especially as the number of authorized manufacturers capable of producing physical media continues to shrink. That’s largely because almost every other form of media, from music to movies, has moved on from optical discs. The big difference with Xbox, though, is that Microsoft has always been obsessed with game preservation.
In the same year that disc-to-digital is launching, Microsoft is also bringing original Xbox and Xbox 360 games to PC. The company has also spent years working on its backward compatibility program, to get as many games from the Xbox and Xbox 360 eras working on modern Xbox consoles. Game preservation is a central part of Project Helix, the next Xbox that could play every Xbox game ever made.
It’s not an easy task to pull off game preservation, either. There are the complex technical challenges that need to be overcome, alongside licensing issues and the business challenges from publishers that decide how a game should be sold.
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