Xbox Outage Blocks Physical Disc Access
AI-generated image · US National Wire
Microsoft claims disc-based games should work offline, but a recent service failure proved otherwise.
A massive Xbox outage that began Sunday night and lasted nearly a day left some console owners unable to play both digital and physical games, according to reporting from The Verge. The disruption also hindered users from launching apps, logging in, or finding games on the Xbox store.
While physical discs are intended to be playable offline, Microsoft's license system requires "entitlement checks"—digital rights licenses that verify a user's access to content. Scott Van Vliet, Xbox technology chief, told The Verge that while an external licensing service caused the outage, an internal issue prevented some consoles from correctly using saved entitlements, which are necessary for offline mode to function.
Van Vliet stated that disc-based entitlement checks are not designed to prevent game access and that Microsoft is preparing an update to prevent a recurrence. This failure comes as Microsoft tests a disc-to-digital feature and Sony prepares to end the production of physical PlayStation game discs by 2028.
As noted by Tom’s Hardware, while Xbox One and Series S/X discs contain encrypted files with attached licenses, Microsoft's own documentation asserts that games with full disc support should remain available for offline use.