Xbox is apparently going all digital on all of its major releases for the rest of 2025, despite increasing prices. The rise of digital gaming has been extremely fast, which has upset a vocal group of gamers and collectors. With the Xbox One and PS4, players were able to download every game on release day and sometimes even pre-download it so it was ready to go at midnight. It was a massively convenient way to play games and ensured people would never have to wait for a game to be shipped or go to the store to buy it, let alone wait for installs if they planned accordingly.
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Now, the bulk of video games are bought digitally and there are consoles that are now sold without disc drives. The Nintendo Switch 2 has found a middle ground with game key cards, a physical cartridge that acts as a license to download the game from the internet with the ability to resell it. It’s an interesting workaround to still have some sort of physical component instead of putting a code in a box, but it hasn’t pleased gamers. However, Xbox seems to be making a larger pivot toward digital gaming, much to the frustration of gamers.
Following the Xbox Games Showcase, many players began looking at pre-order pages for physical copies of upcoming Xbox games like Ninja Gaiden 4 and The Outer Worlds 2 only to see that the boxed Xbox copies do not contain a disc at all. Instead, it’s just a box with a digital download code, largely defeating the purpose of buying a physical copy. However, the PS5 versions of these games do have discs, creating an interesting discrepancy. Xbox fans are understandably upset that these games are only being sold in a true physical format on PS5. This also comes after Xbox raised prices on games, so The Outer Worlds 2 is $80 for nothing more than a digital code.
As of right now, we were unable to find if Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Gears of War: Reloaded will suffer the same fate. Gears of War: Reloaded is coming to PS5 and the physical copy is on sale at Best Buy, but no such luck in finding a physical copy for Xbox (though it is planned to be released at retailers). It’s possible that Xbox’s data shows that PS5 gamers buy physical more than Xbox gamers, making it easier for them to do true physical on another platform. Either way, it’ll be curious to see what this means for future Xbox releases and if Xbox’s next console will be all-digital.
What do you think of this change? Let me know in the comments.
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