Xbox’s clever disc-to-digital feature was 15 years in the making - The Verge

Microsoft’s controversial Xbox One bets are paying off more than a decade later.

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.

Some of those technical challenges mean that not every single Xbox One disc will work with this new disc-to-digital feature. That could be because some early discs simply didn’t get pressed with the unique identifier. Microsoft warned its internal Xbox testers that “it all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured and it may not have the features we need for this program.”

Discs that are slightly damaged might also not work with disc-to-digital, but run just fine otherwise. That’s why it’s important that Xbox is launching this right now — physical media decays over time.

The licensing and business challenges are far more complicated. Publishers need to agree to disc-to-digital, and some could hold back. It appears that most are on board, and even Ubisoft games started showing up recently. We’ve seen a number of other games come online since Microsoft’s announcement, and the company has been clear that more will follow.

The next challenge beyond disc-to-digital is solving digital ownership. If all we really own of a digital game is a license, I hope that one day those licenses can move freely across devices and platforms. I want to buy a single copy of a game and have that license follow me across Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and PC. I also want to be able to gift or sell that license on different marketplaces, just as we’ve been able to do with physical discs at retailers for decades.

Microsoft envisioned this true digital ownership future 15 years ago, and it has gradually taken steps toward making it a reality. I hope Xbox can eventually pull it off, but the solution will require publishers and platform owners to agree on a shared system for how game licenses are bought, transferred, gifted, and resold. That’s a much bigger challenge than simply getting rid of the disc.

Note: There won’t be a Notepad issue next week as I’m out for part of the week.

I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.

Thanks for subscribing to Notepad.