Although many players are still tied to physical media, and large collections of disc games are dusting off the shelves, actually playing these games is getting harder. Many new consoles no longer have disk drives, and nowadays every time you play, inserting a drive to test your game increasingly seems like a waste of time. Well, it seems Microsoft may be working to solve the physical media problem.
A new patent has appeared (thanks to the people from Game Rant), which describes a system in which players confirm ownership of a physical game in a system with a disk drive (including the latest generation consoles) and then via the Internet or local connection confirm it in another diskless system. You will then be able to directly transfer game data from a disk-enabled system to a diskless system or download them from the Xbox Store / Network to a diskless system. The following snippet from Microsoft’s patent describes how the scheme between the “first system” (new diskless console) and the “second system” (console with disk drive) will work.
In some respects, upon receipt of confirmation of the user’s ownership of the electronic content, the first device may be granted access to the electronic content. For example, a digital version of electronic content may be downloaded or transferred to a first device from a second device or from an external device or service. In the examples, access of the first device to electronic content may be effective if the first device and the second device are on the same LAN, while the physical medium containing the electronic content is inserted into the second device, and / or if the digital version of the electronic content available for external device or service.
It is unclear whether this can be used as a simple “disk-to-digital” system. Couldn’t you just use this procedure to transfer your physical games to digital mode and put the discs in the closet? Microsoft Insider Brad Sams heard something about it.
Back in 2018, I wrote about “drive to digital” to turn your physical Xbox games into digital rights.
It looks like Microsoft recently received a patent for this
From disk to digital information: https://t.co/GkJFYVUklO
New patent information: https://t.co/2rizUts0xB pic.twitter.com/m6E15SEg7X
– Brad Sams (@bdsams) May 10, 2022
The paragraph above is not clear on the issue of “from disk to digital”: you may need to save the disk to another system when connecting to the local network, but it also says that content available in a service such as Xbox Store may be enough, hinting on a simple “check and download” system, maybe in the game. Microsoft’s patent outlines the different ways in which they believe the system will be useful …
Accordingly, this disclosure provides many technical benefits, including but not limited to: facilitating access to physical media on next-generation devices, facilitating access to physical media on devices without components for reading physical media, and testing software content with software , streaming and / or downloading content from LAN devices to prevent / reduce Internet charges and bandwidth, sharing software content validation between multiple user devices, and providing options / settings to enable content testing on multiple software devices on multiple software devices users, among other examples.
What do you think? How do you explain this patent? Does this sound intriguing to you?
https://wccftech.com/microsoft-patent-update-physical-xbox-games-digital-discless-systems/
