Rumor: XBOX Disc-to-Digital Initiative Might Arrive Soon

Take your physical discs and convert them to a digital library.

It's been a bleak time for fans of physical media, what with PlayStation announcing it will be ending disc production in 2028, and Microsoft's Project Helix going disc-free when it eventually launches. And while this isn't anything that will save physical media, it's at least something that sort of allows consumers to make use of their physical games, if only to convert them into digital. Rumor has it that XBOX is planning an update in the near future that will allow users to take their disc games and turn them into a digital library.

Some scuttlebutt about a disc-to-digital initiative for XBOX games started swirling back in May, and now it seems that the rollout of this feature could be coming as early as this week. Microsoft Insider lead Brad Rossetti took to his X account to say the following regarding the pause of updates for program from the previous week:

And what might that wait be leading to? According to Windows Central editor Jez Corden, Positron, the alleged internal codename for the disc-to-digital initiative, is what's on the way. So, assuming the feature does make its way to XBOX in the near future, what does it entail, exactly? Apparently, users will insert an Xbox Series or Xbox One disc (Xbox 360 and Xbox discs apparently will not work) into their Xbox Series X console, which will then create an electronic entitlement for that game. The discs can be traded between people, but each swap will register that specific disc to the particular Microsoft account that is using it.

Nothing beats simply playing a disc, of course, but this at least allows consumers to digitize potentially years of collected games to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Sadly, not being able to do this for 360 and original Xbox games is pretty disappointing, but perhaps this might change if the initiative proves popular. As there's no official announcement just yet, keep this under the rumors category, but if anything changes, we'll be sure to update all of you.

Source: Brad Rossetti X Account + Jex Cordon X Account