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

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.

The pad

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

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