Xbox has finally announced its long-rumored plans for a disc-to-digital initiative. The program will allow owners of its physical games to redeem a digital copy whose ownership can be exchanged between different people should you ever want to sell the game, and the rollout of the hotly anticipated program begins in less than a week.
"Today we are introducing a feature that brings the benefits of digital to physical discs, giving players more flexibility in how they access and play supported games across the Xbox ecosystem," a post on Xbox Wire reads, confirming that Xbox Insiders will be able to start putting the new initiative to the test starting on Monday, August 31, 2026.
As for which of your discs you'll soon be able to pop into your Xbox console to claim a digital copy, the post continues, "Most Xbox One and Xbox Series X disc-based games support this new feature." Once the disc-to-digital initiative is available to you, all you will need to do to claim your digital copy of a game you own physically is insert the disc into your Series X or Xbox One console.
Doing so will also mean you can then play that game using Xbox Play Anywhere or Xbox Cloud Gaming.
A list of the games that will be compatible with the new system has not been provided, although it sounds like the list of games that won't fall under the initiative will be a shorter one than listing the games that are. The reveal notes that "thousands" of games will be disc-to-digital compatible when this launches for Insiders next week, with a note confirming that Xbox will endeavor to keep making that list longer over time.
The best way to make that list longer, perhaps even twice as long, would be to bring the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox into the mix. There's no mention of Xbox's first two consoles being a part of this initiative, likely because figuring out how to give owners of those games digital copies to go with their physical ones is a lot more complex. Those consoles also existed during an era where almost all games sold on them were physical rather than digital.
It's a big win for Xbox over PlayStation, too, in a generation where the latter is so far ahead that I'm not sure there's even a console war to be won anymore. The rollout of a disc-to-digital program on Xbox comes in the midst of PlayStation still weathering the backlash from announcing it will no longer release games on discs after 2027. This will only make that backlash even more fierce, as people will question why PlayStation can't do something like this if Xbox not only can do it, but wants to.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/xbox-reveals-disc-to-digital-initiative/
