Jay Peters: Xbox’s huge outage even blocked games on disc
An extended Xbox outage that began Sunday evening hasn’t just caused issues for people trying to play digital games — it blocked people from playing their disc-based games, too.
When Sony announced that they were discontinuing physical discs
It’s still a license when it’s physical. Say MS were to make it so your physical disks didn’t work anymore on their proprietary hardware. What then?
Sony in particular has a habit of doing this type of thing. Additionally DRM to purchased games with an update etc.
They even built DRM into the PS2 and that caused a whole host of problems even with legitimate hardware and media.
We even see this now with all the physical games that don’t work without the internet. They could push a software update tomorrow that takes your whole library with it.
Finally, someone who understands the nuance of physical media, ownership, and licensing.
Physical media =/= ownership
Digital media =/= licensed
And “licensed” doesn’t always mean what you think it does.
It’s still a license when it’s physical. Say MS were to make it so your physical disks didn’t work anymore on their proprietary hardware. What then?
Sony in particular has a habit of doing this type of thing. Additionally DRM to purchased games with an update etc.
They even built DRM into the PS2 and that caused a whole host of problems even with legitimate hardware and media.
We even see this now with all the physical games that don’t work without the internet. They could push a software update tomorrow that takes your whole library with it.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/07/the-disc-is-not-the-game-physical-releases-increasingly-require-extra-downloads/
Ah yes the “they already have been doing it, so it’s ok” fallacy.