The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles were released in 2020. Now that this generation of consoles is heading into its sunset, as Xbox’s announcement of Project Helix this year showed, the project is expected to become a “family of devices.” The features of Microsoft’s new consoles are currently unclear, but rumors are growing that they won’t support physical media.
Microsoft this week put its disc-to-digital program into player testing, allowing discs to be converted into digital copies within the Xbox ecosystem. Digital casting in the new era Podcast release discussed the feature, noting that the Xbox team used it to solve one of the main issues with the Xbox Series S at launch, but it was too late.
Digital Foundry points out that many Xbox One players don’t want to switch to the budget version of the next-gen Xbox precisely because of the lack of drives in the Series S. They can’t actually take their library of games on disc with them:
I think that as we enter the Xbox Series generation, there are quite a few gamers that are left behind. then i [6 лет назад] Particularly troubling is the all-digital nature of the Xbox Series S, which remains so today. There are a lot of people who own Xbox Ones and buy games on disc. If they want to buy this affordable next-gen console, they can no longer play discs. This is not good.
[…] However, in this new situation, through the Disc to Digital program, if they still own an Xbox console, then they will be able to obtain the digital rights of the games on Xbox One and then play them on Xbox Series S. I think this is a very, very interesting situation that seems to correct a mistake that was made 5-6 years ago. I think it’s pretty good.
Note that on Xbox One, you can also activate digital disc licenses for Xbox Series X to play them on Xbox Series S.