Xbox Reportedly Testing Disc-to-Digital Feature - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2026 / 3,954 Views
Following Sony announcing it is ending physical game discs for PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028, The Verge is reporting Microsoft is testing the ability for Xbox gamers to digitize their physical games library.
Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans say Xbox employees have been testing a disc-to-digital feature, which works with Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs. Xbox 360 and original Xbox discs are not supported. At least during the testing phase. An update for the Xbox PC app in May of this year did reference "enable Disc2Digital."
In order to get a digital copy of a game all a user needs to do is insert a compatible disc into a drive, install the game, and play it. A Microsoft account on an Xbox console is required in order to use digital entitlement for physical games. The digital entitlement is tied to the specific disc and will move from account to account if you swap the physical game with a friend or log in to a different Xbox profile and try to play a disc-based game.
This new feature works similarly to buying a digital game from the Microsoft Store. If the game is available on Xbox Cloud Gaming and you have a Game Pass subscription, you will be able to stream the game. If it is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, you will be able to access it on PCs and handhelds.
Game discs that come bundled with a console and multi-disc titles will also work with the Xbox disc-to-digital feature. However, some Xbox One discs might not work.
"It all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured and it may not have the features we need for this program," Microsoft reportedly told internal testers.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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This could have been their chance to do what Sony did in 2013. Announce that unlike Playstation, they are going to fully embrace discs going forward and into their next console, 100%.
Hopefully it works out better than whatever boneheaded move Sony pulls next.
I'm about to go buy a bunch of cheap, scratched up 360/XOne/Series disks that otherwise wouldn't play lol
thats a great idea!
If they roll put something like this, it could get me to make Xbox my main gaming platform. My series X is just collecting dust right now
They kind of already do this... sort of. i have games that i installed from disc, and those same games are also part of GP. And because of my subscription, i am able to play those games already installed without needing the disc because it sees i have a digital right to use based on my subscription. Now, if i let my sub lapse, i would then need to insert the disc in order to keep playing. But i like how they treat the installed game the same no matter if it was from a disc, download or subscription.
Years ago.... Sony tested something similar with PSP games on UMD. They even went so far as to create a USB attached UMD drive for the PS3 that you were supposed to insert the UMD into, it would read the data and generate a digital file that could then be copied to a PSP/Go so the user no longer had to use the UMD itself. They got pretty far along in the testing and then gave up on it. Somewhere exists those test UMD drives that could plug into a PS3.
In order for this to work wouldn't the Helix need a disc drive? Or will this only work if you play it on an older disc based console?
It could probably work if you had Helix as well as an older XB console with a disc drive. If the consoles were linked through your account, you should be able to put your discs in the old XB console and be able to download and play the game digitally on Helix. I would think so anyway.
MS could always have a port on the side of Helix like PS5 has, to slap an attachment optical drive on, or they could just allow any portable optical drive to plug in to one of the USB ports.
I hope that this time Xbox will gain an advantage with game media—I really do...
Fandango at Home (formerly Vudu) has this for movie discs. This would be nice for games.
"It all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured and it may not have the features we need for this program"
Yes I didn't even think Xbox game discs were uniquely identifiable. I guess some must be and have unique certificates but I don't know how widespread that is.
This could be further evidence of Helix being digital only.
Having a disc to digital feature on the Series consoles where physical games can have a digital version connected to their accounts and carried across to future gens could be their attempt to soften the blow of a digital only Helix.
I never thought I'd say that but if it's true, I'll mainly game on Xbox going forward. I started playing more and more physical games on my Series X since I can find many games for dirt cheap for it but I might go even harder that way.
Good to see them trying to figure this out. No idea how they can manage people sharing the game around 7 times but im intrigued.
There is a better article on True Achievements website - it gives the last user of the disc a copy - so if your give the disc away the next person will get the digital copy and your license will be deleted
So the system can read the license from the disk and it registers to the console ID? So if say i give my disk to someone else, it will auto delete my license?
Interesting if true, also makes alot of sense.
