RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 4 sourcesWidespread PSN outage leaves players dreading all-digital future more than ever Widespread PSN outage leaves players dreading all-digital future more than ever Xbox starts testing ad-supported streaming Xbox online services down, leaving many unable to play their digital games Sign in to your Polygon.com account Déjà vu: After PlayStation Network went down last week , preventing some users from playing their digitally purchased games, Xbox 's online services are now experiencing similar problems for many users.
The Xbox status page currently lists a "major outage" for the “account & profile,” “store & subscriptions,” “games & gaming,” and “apps & mobile” sections of Xbox. As for accounts, users “may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in, like most games, apps, and social activity, won’t be available.” The store might be missing certain games, and there could be problems launching other services.
Worst of all, though, users may run into problems playing digital, disc-based, and backward-compatible games right now. According to Microsoft, these outages were originally reported at 11 p.m. EST on Sunday. The company has apparently identified the issue but is still working on a resolution.
The outage couldn’t have come at a more volatile time for many users’ relationship with game ownership. Earlier this month, Sony announced that it would stop making physical game discs , causing concerns that we may be moving closer to a digital-only gaming future.
While data shows that the vast majority of players purchase games digitally at this point, the issue is that users who buy games this way don’t technically own what they purchase; you're buying a license to access the game, not the game itself . As a result of Sony's announcement, PlayStation fans have been flooding the company with criticism , resulting in angry comment sections , calls for boycotts, and pushes toward emulation and piracy .
When a rightsholder decides to take down a digital copy of a game or movie, those who purchased it lose access. Sony recently pulled over 500 movies from users’ PlayStation accounts due to a lapsed contract with a film publisher. If the storefront for an older console is permanently taken down, players lose the ability to download the games they bought for that system. As the recent downtime with PSN and Xbox Live shows, even digital games that don’t directly use online multiplayer are affected when these services are unavailable.
While Microsoft hasn’t clarified if its next console will include a disc drive yet, the company is apparently weighing whether it wants to go the same route as Sony, potentially offering digital licenses for users to access their older physical games.
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