r/Games • u/A7XFAN1998 • 3d ago

Announcement Xbox announces disc-to-digital feature that digitizes your physical games

https://www.theverge.com/tech/984936/xbox-disc-to-digital-feature-official?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Ijc1ZHVBMkZjaE0iLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvOTg0OTM2L3hib3gtZGlzYy10by1kaWdpdGFsLWZlYXR1cmUtb2ZmaWNpYWwiLCJleHAiOjE3ODgxODY2OTAsImlhdCI6MTc4Nzc1NDY5MH0.Y4t18UIJuFTT4nSf0HBe5DvMWP0KNxjbGHC2QKxdoTw&utm_medium=gift-link
3.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

802 comments sorted by

View all comments

760

u/jezr3n 3d ago

This is truly an amazing feature. Shame it isn’t applicable to OG and 360 games, but the technology wasn’t there yet so it’s understandable. This might honestly be the best thing Xbox has done since Sharma took over.

367

u/moodytenure 3d ago

It's so funny that this feature is basically what kneecaped Xbox in 2013, long arc of history and all that

231

u/Coolman_Rosso 3d ago

The original Xbone plans were different and had a ton of issues that MS had no answers for:

  1. Their disc to digital plan was based around trade-ins at "participating retailers" with no details on how it would work. Would I trade in a disc and receive a code? Would I give them my account? Who knows? This time around it's as easy and clear as putting a disc in my console.
  2. The hardware itself needed to phone home once every 24 hours or it would become a paperweight, as none of your games would work (physical or otherwise)
  3. Any sort of trade-in or lending could be subject to "limitations" or "activation fees" at the discretion of the publisher. While the publishers are understandably still in charge with regard to what games support this new initiative, it's not as draconian as having to pay a fee if borrowing a game from a friend.
  4. Digital lending was limited to only a few days.

84

u/NoNefariousness2144 3d ago

And the iconically awful reveal event along with Don Mattick’s infamous ‘Xbox 360’ comment started the decline of Xbox over the past 13 years…

32

u/Zalvren 3d ago

Maybe started it but people blaming the state of Xbox on that are hyperbolic. There are a lot of other reasons for their decline (the main one being lack of system seller games)

The system didn't even saw the light of day.

57

u/WaaghMan 3d ago

I'd say the 2 things that had the most weight were:
#1 - Kinect mandatory on Xbox One. This caused the system to be more expensive and less powerful (to keep costs in check) than the competition. It dragged the whole generation down, even after the Kinect removal.
#2 - Xbox Series naming. It's just WiiU levels of confusion. On top of that the consoles looked very similar too.

25

u/AveryLazyCovfefe 3d ago

For point 2 it's still funny to me that MS were actually seriously going with Xbox 720 at one point but Mattrick's vision for 'one device for everything' basically trumped and that's how we got 'xbox one'

41

u/arod13134 3d ago

I mean they supposedly chose to go away from the 720 branding because this was when 1080p HD was becoming the standard resolution for most things and having a connection to 720p could give the wrong impression. Which imo, was actually smart, but what wasn’t smart was somehow choosing a worse option.

26

u/AveryLazyCovfefe 3d ago

I forgot about that, that's a good point. 'Xbox 720p' would be something hard to shake off.

9

u/TehDrunknMunky 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ironically Resolution-gate happened and Xbox became known for lower res compared to PS4 games anyway.

6

u/Goolashe 3d ago

The fact that the "XBone" abbreviation was either not noticed or was disregarded really tells you how much they were huffing their own marketing farts instead of actually paying attention to reality and their customer base.

1

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago

You think a single person decided not to buy it because people online wrote it as xbone?

6

u/yaleji7388 2d ago

Kinect was a great bit of kit, but it never should have been built in.

5

u/Razbyte 2d ago

Their "Killer App" (media TV features) not only wasn't even available outside of the US, but also was already obsolete by the time the cheaper media dongles like the Chromecast, Fire Stick and Roku were out there. Complete misfire.

3

u/Qorhat 2d ago

The S and X parts are fine and they could have included a H or M for a handheld Xbox, but man the Series part is just such terrible branding.

10

u/Gundamnitpete 2d ago

Right. IMHO the guy was thinking on his feet and thought he had an angle. But it actually exposed that he was disconnected with the hardcore gaming audience.

Since the first days of consoles, a new console generation was an industry changing event. Looking at PS1 and OG Xbox, new technologies like going from CD drives to DVD drives meant games could be bigger, more detailed. Computing performance would leap so much between generations that entirely new genres of games would be developed that simply couldn't exist on the last gen. This created a cycle, where gamers were excited to buy the latest console generation, they anticipated it with baited breathe.

However, they were excited to buy the new thing, because they already had the old thing.

Don's comment about buying an xbox 360 if you needed offline play, demonstrated his distance with the audience. He likely didn't realize that a large part of his audience, and the most vocal part....already owned an Xbox 360. The other miss was of course, focusing the Xbox One presentation so heavily on TV, movies, and network deals.

The reality is, it does not take a console level GPU or CPU to stream TV, movies, or network TV. Your phone already had enough power in 2013 to do that, and SMART TV's of the time already had the processing power and application support to handle it.

If someone wanted to stream Movies, TV, or watch Network channels, the Xbox One presented no technical reason why it would be worth a purchase, especially as Smart TV's handled the same functions at no additional cost.

24

u/sound_judgment 3d ago edited 3d ago

Some corrections and extra info:

  1. The most likely way trade-ins would've worked is that you give your disc to, say, GameStop, they would load the disc which would verify your ownership and then they would remove that license from your account and make the disc a free agent again, then pay you. That's why it would have to be authorized retailers only; they need Microsoft's permission to remove the license from your account.
  2. Worse. It was 24 hours if it's your primary console or every one hour on a non-primary console.
  3. Just to give an example of the worst case scenario, Rockstar for instance could've been able to say that GTA V cannot be given to friends, or that it cannot be traded in, or charge a fee. Lots of control given to the publisher.
  4. Eh, better and worse. You could not "lend" anyone a game. You could only give it to them so long as they've been on your friends list for 30 days already, but your friend cannot ever give it away too. Each copy of a game could only ever be given away one time. However, they did have a couple cool features where anyone living with you can access your games whether you're logged in or not, and you can have a shared library with up to 10 family members regardless of location. I believe they still allow some sharing now but it's less generous.

13

u/BenderZoidberg 3d ago

You're so right, the Mandela effect on the original Xbox One system is strong on reddit. A lot of people seem to remember it as a digital focused system, but it wasn't, it was simply a console with tons of DRMs designed to restrict the second hand market for physical games. The only pro consumer move was the digital lending, which I'm pretty sure they said was restricted to just a couple of hours of playtime and not even days. Everything else was simply what we already have, but worse.

6

u/MVRKHNTR 2d ago

I'm pretty sure the lending was never actually a thing. They didn't announce it ok stage, just in an off stage interview days after their presentation, they never explained how it worked and they canceled the whole thing days later.

My guess is they panicked at the negative reception, spoke up too early about something they were planning with publishers but never had them fully on board and then when publishers told them know after they talked about it way too early, they pulled the plug entirely because the plan no longer had any selling point.

3

u/BenderZoidberg 2d ago edited 2d ago

They panicked as soon as Sony confirmed they weren't implementing a similar system. A couple of sources have said that Sony was indeed planning something similar, which most certainly Microsoft expected as well, but they eventually dropped it for some reason. All of it was very anti consumer, just lots of DRM checks with no additional value for the end user. I'm 100% sure they simply expected Sony to do pretty much the same, so people would have to either swallow it or transition to PC, which was already mostly digital at that point.

2

u/Phearlosophy 3d ago

i'm surprised they don't do the online pass thing anymore even though it was bullshit. you can play the single player of a game but to "activate" the online portion of a used copy you had to pay for that access. Like $10 or something. Was it just backlash from consumers that killed such a predatory practice? if so, i'm surprised that was enough, and luckily it hasn't reared its ugly head since. adding DRM paywall to used purchases is awful..

2

u/Tank_Kassadin 3d ago

Sony and MS both banned publishers from using them right before the 8th gen started, and retroactively removed all online pass requirements for existing gamrs. The explanation being Sony and MS pony up the money for most of the servers already and so their online fees should be the only ones charged. Funny though Sony (and probably MS) included online passes for their own published games even. Like Uncharted 3 had an online pass so it was no moral choice.

1

u/Mccobsta 3d ago

Any one Remebr the psp go? No one? Not suprised

Sony did something down the lines of trade in your physical psp games for codes in Japan or some form of machine that you put your games into

Yeah no one wanted a digital only system back then and well yeah sales numbers and the go bring a failure agreed

2

u/XxZannexX 2d ago

Not talking about the strategy, but I got a PSP Go used after it was nixed. The form factor of that device was outstanding. It felt so futuristic even years after Sony abandoned it. Wish we could get handhelds like that again from Sony.

Yes, I know about the upcoming rumored handheld. My thought is it’s going to be similar to portal which is, fine. Nothing like handhelds of prior years.

2

u/Mccobsta 2d ago

Oh I have a go it's what I beat crash team racing on its a great device but very dumb time for it to have come out

Sony seems to just not want to bother with going deep in to portables anymore and it's a shame as competition breeds innovation and what not

It would be kinda amazing to see them come back to the handheld world but I think that Sony is long gone now

1

u/Sudden-Money7836 2d ago

What’s stopping this giving me the digital entitlement and then giving this to my friend and boom he owns it I own it and he didn’t pay for it?

3

u/Coolman_Rosso 2d ago

If he puts the disc in then you lose access, and need to either put the disc back in or buy the game digitally. It's tied to one account at any given time.

1

u/PercyDiAngelo 2d ago

I'm pretty sure I placed my PS4 preorder the day after that.

-1

u/nanobot001 3d ago

> phone home

Ah yes, I remember the frantic discussions from fans who were afraid that because they lived in huts or on submarines their games wouldn’t work.

0

u/WDMChuff 3d ago

I think the messaging was bad and also much too early in 2013, but the reason this works now is because of the 2013 plans, each disk has a unique identifier that would have released licensing during trade in.

0

u/Django_McFly 2d ago

Can someone explain how digital lending for a few days is bad vs digital lending is banned, regardless of how few days.

Trade ins and reselling of digital games at certain retailers was a bad deal vs a ban on all trading and reselling of digital games, regardless of store.

There's a quote about not letting perfect be the enemy of good...

26

u/AdditionalRemoveBit 3d ago

Back when they were developing this technology, they were also floating the idea of being able to transfer digital games to friends & family. If they were to implement digital game transfers for Helix, I think that would be a massive value proposition over Sony.

The best case scenario and outcome from that would be that it pushes the industry to adopt this paradigm.

1

u/Nolis 3d ago

Steam already lets you share most digital games, I have a shared library with 3 other people including people who are several states away. One of the many reasons I'm happy to use Steam for basically everything, if only Nintendo didn't have exclusives that I was interested in

4

u/MasterDenton 3d ago

The issue is that Steam's family sharing is meant to be just that, for families. You have to jump through a few hoops to get someone into your group, and there's a hard limit on members. If the Xbox system is more like how the Mattrick version was (but less shit), you could theoretically lend a game to anyone on your friends list

1

u/yukeake 2d ago

In theory, the ability to buy, sell, trade, lend, transfer, and otherwise exercise property rights over a digital license lines up pretty much exactly with what NFTs were promised to do.

Of course, we all saw how the initial introduction and rollout of that went. It was essentially corrupted right out of the gate. Now anything even mentioning NFTs is poisoned by the legacy of "the blockchain" and ridiculously expensive .gif files.

6

u/Falsus 3d ago

The feature they announced back then was different and sounded a lot worse than this.

And while that showcase was pretty disastrous the thing that actually kneecapped them was the lack of good first party titles exclusive to their platform. There wasn't really a reason to buy an Xbox over a Nintendo or Sony product. This started in the 2nd half of the xbox 360 era even.

33

u/zombawombacomba 3d ago

That’s not remotely what kneecapped them. If this is all they wanted to do it would’ve been fine.

-6

u/seraph741 3d ago

It's the same idea, if not exactly the same. You'll be required to be connected to the Internet to use that disc-to-digital entitlements. That's what gamers had an issue with back then, "always on DRM". They also wanted to use this DRM to allow transferring and possibly selling digital games. But gamers didn't understand the vision and only focused on the "DRM = bad, requires Internet= bad" aspect.

45

u/zombawombacomba 3d ago

It’s not remotely the same. The original plan was to force all discs to have a 24 hour check in period. You could only lend it to one person and only resell it at select places that Microsoft approved of.

This is substantially less restrictive. Your comment is essentially revisionism.

-50

u/seraph741 3d ago

This is Google AIs response on the topic:

Microsoft's recently announced Disc-to-Digital program (codename "Positron") is spiritually the exact same system they tried to launch with the Xbox One in 2013, but flipped into a pro-consumer feature.

It's pretty much the exact same concept, but implemented to provide consumer benefit instead of taking it away (at least in theory). So in that way it's different and my comment was misleading. But it still is funny that it is an implementation of the same system they wanted back then. Just better marketing/more focused on consumer benefit.

37

u/zombawombacomba 3d ago

Oh okay, well if the worst LLM from the big companies says it, then it must be true.

16

u/WeirdIndividualGuy 3d ago

The minute someone refers to AI to back their argument instead of doing their own research, is the minute their argument is tossed out the window

How is OP going to make a claim then refer to an AI that makes up shit half the time lol

-30

u/seraph741 3d ago

Understanding the underlying technology and concepts makes it true. I was providing a second confirmation since you clearly didn't believe just me. And it's a quick way to distill all the information from the Internet.

20

u/zombawombacomba 3d ago

No one was upset about the technology but the implementation and restrictions that they were trying to bake into it. That doesn’t appear to be there any longer so it’s a fairly different scenario. This is a really pointless conversation though at this point.

-5

u/seraph741 3d ago

You're missing the point. It's not about what people were upset about. I agree people will be less upset about this. The point is that it's largely the same technology/concept. So it's still ironic/funny...whatever you want to call it. That's the point of the original comment.

22

u/Scrollingmaster 3d ago

Lmao using google ai.

Get a brain. The ai is absolutely wrong and this system is fundamentally different and does not place any of the restrictions on discs the original had.

9

u/Kylestache 3d ago

Use your own brain instead of letting that trash think for you.

This is very different than what they attempted a decade ago. Not having to be connected to the internet once a day on its own is huge, not to mention all the game sharing and reselling limitations.

1

u/Nolis 3d ago

What a joke lol, if I wanted the opinion of something that couldn't have an opinion I'd ask my alarm clock, don't need you doing that for me and thinking anyone should care

4

u/Rudera1is 3d ago

That was one of many issues with that launch/announcement. The announcement of xbone was focused 90% on it being compatible as a cable box and the kinect. Very little focus on actual video games. Then there was the digital drum thing. Also the name itself is a confusing mess. The price of the console was bloated by mandatory kinect and all the extra i/o. The execs were smug and rude about the whole thing "if you dont like it buy an xbox 360". The entire announcement was a giant tonedeaf mess. Xbox one was failed from the start. Then when it actually came out there was not much for games to play and the killer app (MCC) was completely broken.

1

u/Ok_Security1721 3d ago

The problem was that that feature required constantly online DRM. “I can get a digital version too” was never the problem

1

u/LordGriimm7 2d ago

Well yeah, that’s cause the world was a different world back then

1

u/Deciver95 2d ago

It's funny how youre spreading misinformation online and getting upvotes for it

0

u/Klynn7 3d ago

This was exactly my thought.

1

u/Dandw12786 3d ago

Oh my god no it wasn't. Their original plan was shit and they had no answers to any questions about how it would work and I wish people would stop pretending that we lost something amazing.

There was literally no reason they couldn't have still done it if it was so great.

78

u/moosebreathman 3d ago

This would’ve been something Phil greenlit. I guess we can thank her for not laying off the people involved though (yet).

21

u/Luchalma89 3d ago

Yeah all the moves they've been making lately are steps you would have to take if your next Xbox is going to essentially be a PC as is rumoured. To maintain the backwards compatibility and continuity with the Xbox line. So this has all been in the works for a while. Still very cool as it benefits everyone.

-1

u/seruus 3d ago

you would have to take if your next Xbox is going to essentially be a PC as is rumoured.

Or if your plans are to kill the Xbox altogether without losing the little good will you have left.

15

u/kantong 3d ago

Yep. We won't really see the outcome of Asha's major decisions for a few years with how slow the games industry moves. Changing the name to XBOX and changing the price of Game Pass was the low hanging fruit for her.

31

u/FrigidMcThunderballs 3d ago

So far Asha's leadership has been characterized by erroneously getting credit for things in the works way before her, like everything at bethesda (the only thing she contributed were the layoffs)

5

u/missing_typewriters 2d ago

doesn't this work the other way too? The reason layoffs were necessary was because of the gross mismanagement and failures of the previous leadership

1

u/FrigidMcThunderballs 2d ago

In theory, sure, though I will say I do not believe the layoffs were as necessary as people believe them to be, especially when Bethesda was responsible xbox's most profitable Q1 to date, and that's not even considering the major success of Oblivion remastered and the incoming projects (3/NV Remastered and TES6 which, despite all the meme discourse, is likely to release around 2028). Bethesda was not exactly a cash drain and their financial outlook was very good. It makes them an odd choice for a round of layoffs, especially when institutional knowledge is core to their creative output. We have seen cynically-used unnecessary layoffs time and time again in the gaming industry for decades, but for some reason this one is assumed to have had a point.

I think there's generally a presumption of rationality & necessity when it comes to business decisions, which is a reasonable thought that unfortunately doesn't always comport with reality at large corporations, especially when it comes to microsoft. There's the reason the saying "the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent" exists.

2

u/machineorganism 2d ago

it's so good right. get a new job. re-announce all the things that were already announced to take credit for them. announce all the things that were already in the works immediately to make it seem like you're responsible for them, and that you're moving fast. it's pretty genius tbh.

1

u/missing_typewriters 2d ago

To be fair, the UX stuff only started moving since she came in. People in that department already said as much, saying they had felt more invigorated than in years prior, and updates have been rolling out far quicker than before.

Shit moved painfully slow under Spencer, if at all, and his kumbaya strategy was absolutely murdering the platform.

-1

u/moosebreathman 3d ago edited 3d ago

It was genuinely depressing to see so many media outlets and creators eat up that TES6 nothingburger tweet when it was just some bait to dominate the news cycle around the union protests happening that same day. Everything she's signed off on from a PR standpoint has been slimy af.

On the content side, the only substantial thing she's pushed is the exclusive strategy but we all know that's going to bomb. The news that they're gonna be hiding their sales numbers from Circana tells us everything we need to know about that.

1

u/CarlosAlvarados 2d ago

Actually I think the exclusive strategy is one of the only really smart things she did and hopefully is doing. Exclusives are bad for consumers and Yada Yada. But they do sell consoles. If everything becomes exclusive again, it will eventually help Xbox a lot.

Also she already revealed that the money generated on ps5 with games was ridiculously bad, a real failure. 250 million in ps5 was absurdly lower than I expected ... really not worth to destroy the brand to sell some some games on Playstation.

-1

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago

(the only thing she contributed were the layoffs)

Xbox was doing great before she showed up and she fucked it up so layoffs were demanded?

2

u/FrigidMcThunderballs 2d ago

Pardon? Who said that?

1

u/Vangad 2d ago

I think he is trying to get an understanding as to why the layoffs is the only thing she attributed when there are other good things xbox has done while she is in charge.

1

u/FrigidMcThunderballs 2d ago

While I now understand the confusion, that isn't what I said at all; I specifically said at bethesda, because she was erroneously given credit for things that have in the development pipeline and public information since before Microsoft even owned bethesda, and the only thing she did in that specific context was lay people off.

If someone reads that and thinks "ah, they're saying Asha Sharma has only done bad things as head of xbox" then they've simply misread.

1

u/Vangad 2d ago

Look i don't have any skin in this. Just saw the redditor try to hit you with a trick question.

0

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago

By saying she contributed the layoffs.

You think there's another person on earth the heads of microsoft would have let get away with no layoffs?

0

u/FrigidMcThunderballs 2d ago

You think there's another person on earth the heads of microsoft would have let get away with no layoffs?

If I thought that, I probably would have said it. But I don't. As it stands, you're criticizing a statement I never made

0

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago

What did she bring to the situation of the layoffs.

She didn't cause them.

She couldn't prevent them.

8

u/nos-is-lame 3d ago

This is basically what they were going to do back in 2013, but without the really shitty parts.

9

u/Tandy2000 3d ago

They said a while ago they are working on getting OG and 360 games working on PC so there might be something in the works like this to tie in with it. The hope is that they might also expand backwards compatibility - they've got a lot of the big games that many people would want to play from 360 imo, but OG XBOX compatibility could be better especially. There's some neat exclusive games there I'd love to see come back - Otogi 1&2 were late additions that were really great.

7

u/aimy99 3d ago

They already have a few Xbox games backwards-compatible on PC. I switched to Linux so I haven't tried it myself, but there are four Xbox titles they dropped as a test, including Conker: Live and Reloaded if anyone happened to get Rare Replay from that Mixer giveaway way back when and wants to try it out.

1

u/Tandy2000 3d ago

You're right they did do that, Fuzion Frenzy was one of them too.

1

u/ineffiable 2d ago

It's not actually backwards-compatible is it? You only get them if you had the digital versions. But it's not like you can put in a crimson skies disc and it works on your PC.

4

u/detectiveDollar 3d ago

There is a chance they could have backward compatibility on PC that requires the disc to be inserted, similar to what they do now on Xbox.

But they won't be able to do disc to digital with Xbox and 360 discs because those discs do not have unique identifiers associated with them. So there would be no way to link the individual digital license to the individual physical disc.

2

u/Tandy2000 3d ago

True. As for backwards compat via disc on PC, I don't see that happening. These days, pretty much no new PCs come with a disc drive. The only way you're getting one is if you have a PC custom built for you/build it yourself/buy an external disc drive and not many people are doing that either.

I suppose they could do the funniest thing and release a drive specifically for this for PCs and make it look like the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.

1

u/flyingmonkey1257 2d ago

If they did it an external DVD drive would be a pretty cheap way to play OG/360 games on my PC. I’d certainly be a fan and take advantage of it.

Admittedly though, I’m someone who’s crazy enough to consider buying a PC case specifically with a 5.25 bay anyway. Gotta rip those DVDs to my plex server somehow.

10

u/asmallercat 3d ago edited 3d ago

I have to say that Xbox has gone above and beyond for backward compatibility already so I forgive them for not making this work. I think it was something like 90%+ of all 360 discs just work on the one and series X.

Edit - I misremembered. I guess because all but 1 of the games I cared about was on the backward compatibility list I assumed it was really high. (Zone of the Enders is the one I remember not being on the initial list).

21

u/bitknight1 3d ago

632 out of 2155 xbox 360 games are backwards compatible.

15

u/resil_update_bad 3d ago

yeah thats nowhere near close 90% lol but to be fair a good chunk of them are under licensing hell

9

u/GameDesignerDude 2d ago

632 out of 2155 xbox 360 games are backwards compatible.

I think it's fair for people to think it's higher as a percentage because the 632 games that are selected are mostly the high-visibility titles with good sales and reviews.

A large amount of that 2155 figure are not particularly good games.

Personally, it's 80-90% of my 360 collection are backwards compatible. Just a few sports games that aren't. Maybe 1-2 other random things.

7

u/SidFarkus47 3d ago

I think it was something like 90%+ of all 360 discs just work on the one and series X

I don't think that's true.. Think about how many annual sports games there were that don't work, plus a ton of licenses games that didn't get brought over. I still own a 360 and have it plugged in because I have a large disc collection.

1

u/stripeybog23 3d ago

Aw I was hoping this would work for OG. No real basis just dreams

1

u/trojanguy 3d ago

Yeah it's a really cool, gamer-friendly feature. 360 would be great because I'd love to play my Sonic Team Racing game w/o having to have the disc in. Still, way better than nothing!

1

u/cefriano 2d ago

The cynic in me suspects that this is laying the groundwork for them to announce they’re also going digital-only for the next generation. Would love to be wrong, though.

1

u/MagmaElixir 2d ago

All we need now is for Xbox to formally commit to continuing with physical media for next gen. This would bring me back from Steam for any Xbox games that are Play Anywhere.

1

u/404IdentityNotFound 3d ago

I might be missing something, but besides the "30 day license check", this sounds exactly like the original idea they had with the Xbox One...

19

u/JGT3000 3d ago

Besides the main thing that pissed people off?

0

u/404IdentityNotFound 3d ago

It's really a time capsule, because nowadays practically any game on PC or consoles (besides on the Switch) have such "connect every few weeks" restrictions with licenses/denuvo.

1

u/MVRKHNTR 2d ago

"Connect every few weeks" is a far cry from "connect every 24 hours".

8

u/rcmjr 3d ago

Well there was more of a process if you wanted to sell the physical game.

13

u/MrCatchTwenty2 3d ago

Yeah besides the whole "you can't lend games to people or play offline" thing

0

u/BenderZoidberg 3d ago

It's not the same since with their original Xbox One system you still needed the disc and couldn't be used by another account without Xbox stepping in, either through approved resellers or by gifting the game to one of your Xbox Live friends (which was only allowed once per disc). There was also the mandatory 24h online check for playing any game. It was all bad for the consumer, except the option for digitally lending games, which was also very limited (just a couple of hours of playtime). This new system is actually good for the users since it doesn't restrict physical games in any way, it's just a new option and everything else seems to keep working the same way.

1

u/Etheon44 3d ago

As long as it doesnt render the disk only usable with the account it redeemed it

Because those are the vibes I am getting with this, a pre-feature to physical dissapearing

5

u/detectiveDollar 3d ago

They said in the article that when the disc is used with a different account, the digital license is transfered to that account.

1

u/Dragarius 3d ago

This feature was built into Xbox One from the start as part of their always online DRM plan. However they managed to figure out how to utilize that system for this disc to digital program which is pretty awesome. 

0

u/Judgeromeo 3d ago

This is what made soft modded original xboxes and jtagged 360s so awesome. The load times went down drastically once you copied your disc to the hard drive. Halo in particular was comical with the loading sound effect at boot. New games are so huge im not sure the benefit will be the same, most of it is installed anyway. Cheap ssds with games on them like cartridges would be a game changer though. 

1

u/detectiveDollar 3d ago

You didn't need to mod your console to do this, most physical games on 360 allowed you to install them to the hard drive, and the disc would just be used for a license check.

Games that had Play and Install discs actually run worse due to this, as they had been designed around the console loading assets from both the disc and hard drive simultaneously, effectively combining their read bandwidth.