This week, Xbox officially announced their disc-to-digital program. While they haven't given it a catchy name yet, the program will allow you to convert the physical disc games you own into digital licenses. This means you'll be able to play those games anywhere.
XBOX claims that "most" XBOX One and XBOX Series X disc-based games support this new feature. Once live, players will be able to claim a digital entitlement "by inserting a supported disc into an XBOX One or XBOX Series X console and launching the game." Once this entitlement is claimed, you can play that game everywhere that XBOX Play Anywhere is supported. This means that your game can be played on PC and various gaming handhelds. You also benefit from cloud saves and synced achievements. You will also be able to play everywhere that XBOX Cloud Gaming is supported. The physical disc will continue to work as always, should you ever just want to sit back down at your actual XBOX console.
According to the details provided in the announcement image, players will receive "one revocable digital license per game disc." This strategy appears to be Microsoft's way of preventing players from easily sharing games with each other to obtain a "free" copy of a game. Each Xbox disc has a unique identifier, allowing Microsoft to track ownership of licenses effectively. Additionally, once a disc is used on another console or account, the digital license will be immediately revoked from the previous account.
XBOX says they are starting with "thousands" of titles and they will add more over time.
The disc-to-digital program opens first for XBOX Insiders on August 31. It is not yet known when this program will leave testing and be made available to non-Insiders.
