Xbox’s clever disc-to-digital feature was 15 years in the making

When Xbox announced a new feature last month that lets you digitize existing physical game collections, I immediately thought of the Xbox One. Disc-to-digital seems like a clever new feature for Xbox, perfectly timed as a response to Sony killing PlayStation discs. But the reality is that it has been 15 years in the making and is now a big part of Xbox’s ongoing game preservation efforts. Ahead of the launch of the Xbox One in 2013, Microsoft made a key decision to uniquely identify discs. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me the company was exploring the idea of true Xbox digital ownership in 2011, including digital gifting, recycling digital games, and the ability to swap discs at retail stores in exchange for a digital version. Some of those original Xbox One plans leaked out online, and many others have remained secret for more than a decade. Microsoft’s Xbox One launch hinted at some of these ideas, too. The console was originally supposed to be always online, to enable Microsoft’s vision of digital game sharing, and more. Microsoft walked back those plans after a messy and confusing Xbox One launch created a backlash to the always-online requirement. But some…