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While there aren’t actually any laborious official figures, it is no secret that Xbox has develop into a broadly digital platform.
In a long time previous, we loaded up video video games on cassettes, cartridges, CDs, and ultimately Blu-Ray discs. Around the appearance of Blu-Ray, although, one thing modified.
Today’s PCs and laptops rarely even ship with a disc drive at all, and the same is about to happen to the traditional consoles, too, most likely.
A variety of factors are putting an end to the very concept of disc-based games. More and more games ship digitally only, particularly in the PC / Steam era, and more and more consoles are shipping without disc drives. Both PlayStation and Microsoft have discless digital versions of their console range, with PlayStation’s financials pointing to a pattern away from bodily copies at an rising tempo.
This pattern has been extra fast for Xbox.
The dying of the bodily Xbox sport
Microsoft was the first of the big console platform holders to offer direct digital downloads for games, and the first to launch a discless console. Microsoft also incentivizes users switching to digital with its push towards device-agnostic play, which depends on the licenses being digital. Xbox Game Pass is also at the forefront of the Microsoft gaming ecosystem, and naturally, it’s all based on digital DRM. And, you can’t play your physical discs in the cloud, via Xbox Play Anywhere, or on an Xbox Series S. Most of the paths into the Xbox ecosystem these days are simply digital-first.
On Amazon Store listings for games, the firm often offers both an Xbox Series X|S digital key, alongside the Xbox Series X disc-based version. To complicate matters, there’s also now a discless Xbox Series X as well. For massive online retailers like Amazon, none of this has presented much of an issue. But the market of addressable users wanting Xbox discs has shrunk to such a degree that many traditional retailers have stopped stocking Xbox discs altogether.
Microsoft has yet to offer a USB-based disc drive attachment for any of its consoles, and there’s honestly no reason to think it will. The upcoming Xbox Ally handheld will naturally be digital-first, although, as a Windows PC, you could plug a disc drive in via its USB ports. But at least for gaming, there’s almost no reason to do so. When was the last time you purchased a physical PC game? I can’t even remember; it has been literal decades. But not everyone is happy with it.
The issue with the Konami titles is we have no digital share on the platform and physical releases on Xbox – even of major, substantial games – rarely top 2,000 copies sold. We wouldn’t be able to make our investment back. Unfortunately Xbox is a very digital heavy platform.September 18, 2025
Companies like Limited Run Games have been completely improbable at offering bodily variations of assorted video games, with an emphasis on console video games. LRG is by far and away the frontrunner right here, however regardless of its fame, even it has struggled to discover a actual return on funding for creating Xbox variations of some titles.
Speaking to a person on X, Josh Fairhurst described why it has not created Xbox variations for some upcoming Konami Limited Run Games. “[Our] physical releases on Xbox — even of major, substantial games — rarely top 2,000 copies sold,” Fairhurst mentioned frankly. “We wouldn’t be able to make our investment back. Unfortunately, Xbox is a very digital heavy platform.” Fairhurst defined that after they’ve entered into offers purely for bodily royalties, the Xbox quantity merely is not there to justify the inventory allocation, primarily.
“Yes, a port [to Xbox] will cost us about $50K on average, and physical releases on Xbox generally only make us about $30K after costs and partner royalties. We count on digital to make up the slack, but on some projects we have no share or only a tiny share in the digital earnings.”
Limited Run Games usually offers with indie titles and video games which have a smaller footprint, however even greater firms like Square Enix, of Final Fantasy fame, have given up on launching bodily video games on Xbox. Final Fantasy 16, 7 Remake, and Final Fantasy Tactics — all direct-to-digital on Xbox.
Microsoft’s fame as a sport preserver has been questioned
I haven’t purchased a physical Xbox game since the Xbox 360 era, so I’m very much part of the trend that has created this situation. However, I do have fond memories of collecting games as a kid, back when I was less storage-conscious. For those with the space and time, it’s a great hobby, and one I wouldn’t like to see disappear.
Microsoft has positioned itself as pro-game preservation — but digitally so. Thanks to Xbox’s very excellent backwards compatibility program, Xbox is ironically the only place where you can play every single mainline Final Fantasy game on a single device, given that some never launched on modern PlayStation or PC platforms. The downside is that, of course, it depends on Microsoft’s continuing support for the Xbox platform ecosystem.
Disc-based games that fully support offline play are the only real guarantor of preservation further into the long term. Microsoft has shown itself to be a non-committal company, changing its priorities on a dime to chase shareholder bucks. For many, that lack of confidence in Microsoft’s priorities creates a great deal of anxiety over its commitment to gaming — which would naturally lead to a preference for discs, or perhaps leaving the platform entirely.
Surely there’s more Microsoft could do here to create a win-win situation for all gamers in its ecosystem, and not just the ones who have gone fully digital.
It would be awesome if Microsoft could partner more closely with Limited Run Games to help subsidize or offset some of the costs. There’s no real reason I can see why Microsoft couldn’t also create a cheap external USB disc drive for its Xbox Series S or X digital consoles, even if all it was for in the short term was license validation. USB read/write speeds may preclude modern games from running fully from the disc, but perhaps the next-gen Xbox consoles will have more modern ports. Microsoft could keep stocks low and build carefully based on demand, at least to help users who have amassed large libraries of physical games.
Indeed, the next Xbox is widely expected to be more PC-like than ever, running full Windows 11 (or maybe Windows 12?). This would potentially make it the most compatible console in history, if indeed it has the full range of legacy APIs that Windows proper has. In partnership with AMD, Xbox is building chips that support both PC games and traditional Xbox console games, and Microsoft President Sarah Bond oversees an internal game compatibility task force dedicated to this effort.
Perhaps in that universe, just any standard USB Blu-Ray disc drive would be able to carry your disc-based Xbox library forward, but that might be wishful thinking.
Microsoft is typically a company that identifies trends and leans into them — and is rarely one willing to fight against them. Microsoft sees digital delivery as the ultimate form of preservation and compatibility, which naturally benefits it, since you’d need to be in its ecosystem and cloud to access it.
For those who simply enjoy collecting physical games as part of the “fun” of the hobby, Microsoft’s utilitarian attitude towards gaming will perhaps run in opposition. But, even Nintendo and its partners have been criticized for releasing Switch games that don’t actually contain a cartridge.
Perhaps the “convenience” current is just too strong to swim against here. What do you think?
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