Square Enix and Ubisoft Sabotage XBOX Physical Media Push

For all the flak XBOX has received recently, one of its biggest wins lately is the Disc to Digital program.

In short, this lets you redeem your physical games and digitize them. All you need to do is be an XBOX Insider, insert a supported physical Xbox game disc into a console, and answer the prompt about redeeming a digital version of the game. It's that easy and convenient.

Now, you might be asking: what happens if you sell that game? The digital license will transfer over to the new owner. It's a super consumer-friendly process that emphasizes the importance of game owners retaining access to the games they've purchased, as XBOX CEO Asha Sharma states.

Your physical game library is more than a collection of discs. It holds years of memories and stories worth preserving. Starting next week, XBOX Insiders can unlock a digital entitlement for supported physical games. We'll start with thousands of titles and add more as we can.

However, not every publisher is taking part in the Disc to Digital program, including some pretty big holdouts.

Currently, You Can Not Digitize Games By Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Select Other Publishers

As reported by both Insider Gaming and Kotaku, games from select publishers are not able to have a digital license redeemed.

Square Enix, Ubisoft, Sega, and Bandai Namco are the publishers currently not participating in the program. Those are some pretty big franchises being left in the dust, including Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Assassin's Creed, Yakuza, and Elden Ring.

Kotaku's Ethan Gach, who says that Ubisoft told them to "reach out to XBOX," had an error message come up when he tried to redeem a Ubisoft game. Instead of being able to redeem a digital license, the screen told him, "This game is not participating in digital licensing. You can still play with the disc inserted."

This does not mean that these publishers have officially opted out of the program. These are simply the ones that people are reporting issues with.

One little caveat to note here is that if you're looking to redeem a digital license for a physical XBOX game that's XBOX Play Anywhere supported, only to find out that you're unable to, you'd have to buy a separate digital copy of the game to play it on PC. That's not exactly consumer friendly, as Play Anywhere is only applicable to the digital version of a game. If you happened to buy a physical copy, you're out of luck.

Game Ownership Continues to Be a Hot Button Topic

It's been a loud past couple of months regarding physical games.

In July, Sony announced that they will no longer produce physical games starting in 2028. Their reasoning has to do with consumer trends. "This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," they said in a statement. "This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today."

Yes, there's no doubting that consumers have embraced digital copies of games over the past few years, but there are a couple of reasons for that. First, there's no denying the convenience of buying digitally: why wait for a physical game to arrive in the mail or go pick it up from the store when you can buy it from the comfort of your own home? Plus, digital games are on sale all the time, so you're saving money!

That said, do you know what's better than buying a digital game? Always making sure you own that game. With digital games, you're not necessarily buying the game; you're buying a license that could expire at any time. Compare that to physical games, which entitle you to the actual game, not a license.

Consumers continue to push back against this digital-only trend, but unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether or not something good will come out of all this.