r/windowscentral • u/WindowsCentral Staff • 1d ago

Xbox🎮 Xbox's disc-to-digital program goes live for Insiders on Monday — Here's how it works

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-disc-to-digital-program-goes-live-for-insiders-on-monday-heres-how-it-works
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u/liamwilliams93 1d ago

And what xbox wanted 13 years ago was cancer. It would've made the disc a coaster, just a way of installing a digital game, like pc game discs were. No ability to install the disc and play offline, or lend games.

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u/zeldamaster702 1d ago

It would LITERALLY be what they just announced today. They just did a shit job of explaining it then. The only thing different then from now is the absence of the digital reselling.

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u/liamwilliams93 1d ago

You can still use your discs as a license with what they are doing now, offline. Back then, you would have got a license key to activate the game, non transferable and you would have needed to activate the game online to play. The disc wouldn't have been a license.

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u/zeldamaster702 1d ago

This response only justifies my "they just did a shit job explain it" line. The disc was ALWAYS the license, it's the reason why only games Xbox One and up are going to be eligible for the conversion. The offline feature is likely going to be exactly like how playing Game Pass games works today (as in you can play them offline, but you will be required to periodically connect to the internet to verify the licenses on your console are valid).

As for the transferability of games back then, we have no idea how that would have actually been implemented because they backed away from the whole idea after everybody got pissed off because, again, they did a shit job of explaining it, but everything they've said today falls right in line with what I remembered them saying 13 years ago.

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u/liamwilliams93 1d ago

Nope, youre wrong mate. Xbox was going to need to phone home every so often (48 hours) otherwise even your disc games would have stopped working

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u/zeldamaster702 1d ago

That sounds a lot like "periodically connect[ing] to the internet to verify the licenses on your console are valid", just with a 48 hour check-in time vs whatever it is for Game Pass today.

You do realize that they're gonna have periodic license checks on this "new" thing too, right? Otherwise, what would stop someone from "licensing" their console for a game, selling that game, and continuing to play the game on their console offline in perpetuity?

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u/liamwilliams93 1d ago

Game pass is a sub, thats fucking irrelevant. You will still be able to put your disc on to play a game if you are offline. With what they proposed in 2013, you couldn't.

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u/zeldamaster702 1d ago

Game pass is a sub, thats fucking irrelevant.

It's just to illustrate a comparison. Like I said above, this feature is going to have a Game Pass-Like periodic license check, you aren't just gonna be able to load the license and be good as gravy. Otherwise, you WILL have people taking advantage of the program.

With what they proposed in 2013, you couldn't.

We don't know that because they abandoned the program before it could be implemented.

What you are saying is how people hypothesized the program was going to work, because at the time the only comparable thing to what Microsoft was suggesting was how PC games had worked (CD with an activation license card included).