Sony has already made the end of physical discs official and reports suggest Microsoft could follow suit. But the Xbox manufacturer is apparently planning a lifeline for fans’ game collections: a disc-to-digital feature will convert data storage media into digital licenses.
Today, Wednesday, Sony caused a real shock in the PlayStation community: As was officially confirmed, they will be from January 2028 Completely stop producing Blu-ray discs – a step that makes the PS6 a purely digital console.
And Microsoft could also reportedly follow suit with the next Xbox, which is currently being built under the code name Project Helix. do without a drive. A problem that now concerns fans of both camps: backwards compatibility with your own physical collection.
But Microsoft seems to have already found a solution to solve the dilemma between abandoning drives and old disc collections.
Disc2Digital: Saving the physical collection?
After the first indications of Microsoft’s possible solution were seen in the code of the Xbox PC app in May, renowned industry expert Tom Warren is now also reporting on it The Vergethat the Xbox manufacturer is testing a feature codenamed “Disc2Digital” that converts physical games into full-fledged digital licenses.
“Microsoft will likely soon follow Sony’s lead and stop producing physical discs for Xbox games,” Warren said. “But rather than abandoning physical media entirely, the company is quietly working on a ‘disc-to-digital’ capability, according to sources linked to Microsoft’s plans.”
The process for “digitizing your existing physical game collections” should be very simple: you insert your disc into a current Xbox console with a drive and start the game. This causes the system to register the disc’s unique ID code and link a digital authorization to your Microsoft account.
The game should then function like a digital purchase – including all advantages such as cloud gaming and Xbox Play Anywhere for the PC.
What happens when you lend or sell? And what about the 360 classics?
But how does Microsoft prevent a disc from being passed around among friends and digitized endlessly? Dynamic rights management comes into play here: the digital license remains firmly linked to the physical disc.
“Discs will continue to work even after digitalization,” says Tom Warren. “The only way you lose digital permission is if you lend the disc to a friend or sell it to someone else.”
As soon as the disc is started in a different console or with a different profile, the digital license automatically moves to the new account. The original owner then loses digital access until they reinsert the disc.
But as clever as the system sounds, there is also a limitation: According to the report, the feature will only work for Xbox One and Series X games. Classics from the original Xbox and Xbox 360 are completely excluded because the old discs simply lack the modern security features to be able to track them individually.
The fact that Microsoft is making such an effort makes it unmistakably clear where the next generation of consoles is headed: namely into a purely digital future. However, according to Warren, it is not yet set in stone whether Project Helix will be completely driveless.
“It is my understanding that Microsoft has not yet made a final decision as to whether the next-generation Xbox will ship with a built-in disc drive. However, if Helix is disc drive-less, this feature could become essential for existing Xbox owners looking to digitize their game collections in time for future Xbox consoles,” Warren concludes.
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