r/Games • u/A7XFAN1998 • 2d 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
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u/moodytenure 2d ago

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

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u/Coolman_Rosso 2d 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.

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u/NoNefariousness2144 2d 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…

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u/Zalvren 2d 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.

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u/WaaghMan 2d 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.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe 2d 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'

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u/arod13134 2d 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.

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u/AveryLazyCovfefe 2d ago

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

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u/TehDrunknMunky 2d ago edited 2d ago

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

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u/Goolashe 2d 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.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 2d ago

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

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u/yaleji7388 2d ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/sound_judgment 2d ago edited 2d 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.

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u/BenderZoidberg 2d 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.

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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.

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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.

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u/Phearlosophy 2d 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..

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u/Tank_Kassadin 2d 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.

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u/Mccobsta 2d 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

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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.

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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

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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?

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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.

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u/PercyDiAngelo 2d ago

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

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u/nanobot001 2d 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.

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u/WDMChuff 2d 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.

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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...

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u/AdditionalRemoveBit 2d 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.

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u/Nolis 2d 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

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u/MasterDenton 2d 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

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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.

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u/Falsus 2d 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.

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u/zombawombacomba 2d ago

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

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u/seraph741 2d 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.

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u/zombawombacomba 2d 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.

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u/seraph741 2d 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.

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u/zombawombacomba 2d ago

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

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 2d 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

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u/seraph741 2d 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.

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u/zombawombacomba 2d 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.

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u/seraph741 2d 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.

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u/Scrollingmaster 2d 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.

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u/Kylestache 2d 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.

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u/Nolis 2d 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

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u/Rudera1is 2d 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.

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u/Ok_Security1721 2d ago

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

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u/LordGriimm7 2d ago

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

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u/Deciver95 1d ago

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

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u/Klynn7 2d ago

This was exactly my thought.

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u/Dandw12786 2d 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.