Microsoft Says Disc Games Should Have Worked During Xbox Outage

Microsoft has said that physical disc-based games on Xbox should have continued working during a recent worldwide outage that left some players unable to access them, according to reporting from Engadget and Tom's Hardware.

Xbox consoles experienced a global outage during which users were unable to launch even disc-based titles intended to be playable offline. Service was restored within about a day, according to Tom's Hardware.

The company attributed the problem to a fault in its entitlement checks. According to Microsoft, disc-based games are verified through entitlements — records saved directly on the console that determine what content a user can access, including when offline. Xbox tech chief Scott Van Vliet told The Verge that disc-based entitlement checks are not meant to prevent players from reaching their games and that this behaviour is by design, as reported by Tom's Hardware. He said the team identified an issue that stopped consoles from correctly using saved entitlements during the outage.