Xbox outage blocks physical disc games, Microsoft to fix

A major Xbox network outage that began on July 27 and lasted nearly 24 hours prevented players worldwide from accessing online services and, unexpectedly, from playing some games they owned on physical discs. The incident, which was resolved by the evening of July 28, has intensified a broader debate about digital ownership and the reliability of physical media in an increasingly online-dependent gaming ecosystem.

Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet confirmed the outage was caused by the failure of an external licensing service provider, which the platform depends on for entitlement checks. These checks verify a user's right to access content, including games installed from physical discs. While the service disruption was expected to affect digital libraries and online play, the failure of some disc-based games to launch offline represented a significant departure from the platform's intended design.

In a statement, Van Vliet acknowledged the problem, stating that "disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design." He explained that consoles are meant to rely on saved entitlement data when offline, but a technical issue...