This is kind of a “summarize a Youtube video” post, but since I have talked about digital ownership in the past, I felt it prudent to mark the occasion.

Legendary Drops has a recent video talking about how Xbox is rolling out a new feature that allows players with physical discs to effectively “claim” a bonus digital license of that same game to use with Play Anywhere and cloud streaming. If you then sell the game disc to someone else, that new person can claim the game instead, thereby revoking your own license. You can watch the video below:

I didn’t actually think too much about the Xbox announcement until Legendary Drops spelled it out for me, and he is exactly correct: this is the beginnings of true digital ownership. Well, “ownership*.” You cannot directly sell the digital license to another person, and none of these benefits apply to someone who straight-up bought the game digitally. And it’s still possible that Xbox follows in Sony’s footsteps and says no physical discs will be made for the next-gen console. It’d be weird to do so right after an announcement like this, but it’s Microsoft, they’ve hurt themselves in confusion more than once.

But. BUT. They’re doing the thing. A transferrable digital license… tied to a physical disc… but still a transferrable digital license. Nobody can make the argument anymore that the infrastructure necessary to support transferrable licenses would be too complicated or onerous. Microsoft is starting this whole thing right now.

Who is next? Nintendo? God, I would love that. Maybe… Steam?!

Realistically, probably not. It may just end up being Microsoft flapping alone in the wind here, as they are certainly the most desperate and in need for any angle to get them back into (and selling) the game(s). Still, it’s something, and certainly more than we had two months ago.