Xbox officially unveils a way to digitize your physical game collection

Published Aug 26, 2026, 10:55 AM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. Sign in to your XDA account Summary Xbox's new disc-to-digital feature lets you insert a supported Xbox One or Series X disc to claim a digital copy. The digital entitlement stays with the disc and transfers with it. The feature also supports Play Anywhere/cloud when eligible. Testing starts August 31st for Insiders, with a wider rollout coming later. Following months of rumors, Microsoft has officially announced a new Xbox feature that allows Xbox users to digitize their existing physical game library. The new disc-to-digital feature is the next step in Microsoft's ongoing game preservation efforts. "Most Xbox One and Xbox Series X disc-based games support this new feature," writes Jason Ronald, the VP of next-generation at Xbox. "Players can claim a digital entitlement by inserting a supported disc into an Xbox One or Xbox Series X console and launching the game." According to the blog post, the digital entitlement is tied to the specific disc, and it will switch between accounts if you give it to a friend or use a different Xbox profile to play the game from its disc. Once you have the digital version of an Xbox disc game, you'll also be able to access the title through Xbox Play Anywhere or stream it to other devices via the cloud. For this to work, the game needs to support Microsoft's Xbox Play Anywhere program. Some questions about the new disc-to-digital feature remain This could be a step towards Xbox eventually ditching physical games Credit: Microsoft It's unclear whether there will be a limit on how many times a game can be transferred, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is (there's likely some sort of licensing limitation). We also don't know what games will be supported by the feature. Microsoft has so far only said that "thousands of titles" will be included, with more coming over time. Microsoft says it will start testing its Xbox disc-to-digital feature with Xbox Insiders on August 31st, followed by a wider rollout to more Xbox One and Xbox Series X consoles later. This announcement comes just weeks after Sony revealed it plans to kill physical PlayStation game discs for all titles released after January 2028. It's unclear if Microsoft's disc-to-digital program is a step towards making a similar decision regarding physical games. In other recent Xbox-related news, Asus announced it will sell the ROG Xbox Ally X20 separately for $1,300. Previously, the limited-edition handheld was only available as part of a pricey $2,500 bundle that included Xreal R1 Edition Gaming AR glasses.