Xbox Is Looking Into Discs Failing During Recent Outages

Xbox States Discs Should Not Fail During Outages, "We're Looking Into Reports" Published Jul 29, 2026, 10:26 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Sign in to your TheGamer account Earlier this week, Xbox suffered from major network outages that prevented players not only from buying and downloading games, but playing them altogether — even from a physical disc. In response, chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet assured that entitlement checks “should not prevent players from accessing their games,” and that the team is looking into the matter. “We’re looking into reports that some players were unable to access games using discs as expected during the service interruption,” Vliet said in a statement to The Verge. “Disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design.” Why This Happened Xbox runs periodic digital license checks to verify ownership, including for physical games, which include encrypted licenses. Your console is then supposed to save this verification so that games can continue to be played offline. During the recent outages, that didn’t happen for some users, as there was an issue preventing consoles “from correctly using saved entitlements.” As per Microsoft’s own documentation, discs are intended to be “available for offline use,” and so Vliet promised that Xbox is working on a fix to prevent this from happening again in the future. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Xbox, with game preservation and ownership an exceedingly hot button topic right now after Sony announced that it would be ceasing game disc production from 2028 onwards, while also closing the PS3 and Vita storefronts. Petitions, boycotts, lawsuits, and social media posts inundated with backlash: the internet is alight over the news. Project Helix is reported to be following suit, abandoning the disc drive alongside the PS6. However, it’s also rumored that Xbox is working on a disc-to-digital feature that will allow you to convert your physical library to continue playing on next-gen, a notable step above PlayStation. Right now, outages like these cast doubt on a digital-exclusive future for gaming, as DRM and frequent license checks failing would render consoles completely useless. Discs should be the answer, as has been argued by Sony detractors — an offline option if all else fails, working even when storefronts are shuttered and the console giants have long since moved on from their hardware. Hopefully, the upcoming update ensures that for all Xbox players. Brand Microsoft Original Release Date November 10, 2020 Original MSRP (USD) $499 Operating System Proprietary (Windows-based) Processor Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8 GHz Resolution 720p - 4K UHD