MVG: Making sense of Xbox DRM and Physical Media

[AHA-Lambda]

MVG has made a similar video on this previously but this is new, made after the recent outages with that in mind.

tldr:
he tests installing 6 disc based games offline with his series x system being set as the home console
4 smart delivery games (AC Valhalla, Balan Wonderworld, Far Cry 6, Resi 8) = AC, FC6, RE8 can't finish installation however Balan does
1 XB1 game (Crackdown 3) = can't finish installation
1 Series X non smart delivery game (GTA 5) = does finish installation, and also alludes to previous testing that he's made with any non smart delivery series x disc he's tried has also worked

He also theorises that we'll see more discs work offline in the future as we move away from smart delivery.

Lock if old.

 

[vixolus]

"He also theorises that we'll see more discs work offline in the future as we move away from smart delivery."

Definitely an easy theory to make as that's exactly how the system is intended to work. XSX native games (of which I presume Balan Wonderworld has the Series X edition on disc as well as the One version) will install offline and be playable offline. Similar to how an Xbox One can install these Smart Delivery / Xbox One native games offline. As cross-gen ends this won't (shouldn't) be a problem.

 

[Delusibeta]

To deliberately mis-quote Don Mattick, if you want Xbox One discs to install offline, buy an Xbox One (S, since I speculate Xbox One X enhanced games will have similar download requirements for the enhancements).

 

[Jawmuncher]

Yeah, smart delivery discs are an absolute pain if you want to play anything offline.

With that said, he should have done a bit more testing. I tested Village a while back and was able to play it offline via the disc. However, I had to have it installed on an external HDD. Why that seems to bypass the check is beyond me but I guess it's due to the Xbox knowing XSX games can't run from that so doesn't give it the check of needing to be the "XSX" version.

 

[show me your skeleton]

i've not watched the video yet but i guess the Smart Delivery games don't just let you ignore/bypass the upgrade and play/install the last gen version? if so that's dumb.

 

[Dancrane212]

Yeah, smart delivery discs are an absolute pain if you want to play anything offline.

Click to shrink...

Things are certainly improving when possible. 4 of the 5 smart delivery discs I last tested installed a playable Series X release offline—yes they were smaller installs so both versions could fit on the disc, but releases of that size mostly (at least the ones I tested) shipped with just the Xbox One version in 2021.

 

[Wrexis]

i've not watched the video yet but i guess the Smart Delivery games don't just let you ignore/bypass the upgrade and play/install the last gen version? if so that's dumb.

Click to shrink...

I think Digital Foundary did this recently with Elden Ring as the last gen version had some benefits to try. It was a completely PITA to do.

 

[Jawmuncher]

i've not watched the video yet but i guess the Smart Delivery games don't just let you ignore/bypass the upgrade and play/install the last gen version? if so that's dumb.

Click to shrink...

If you're online you absolutely can't play without upgrading, it's really wack.
RE: Village forced me basically reinstall the game again via download even though it was already installed and I was content playing it without the upgrade.

Things are certainly improving when possible. 4 of the 5 smart delivery discs I last tested installed a playable Series X release offline—yes they were smaller installs so both versions could fit on the disc, but releases of that size mostly (at least the ones I tested) shipped with just the Xbox One version in 2021.

Click to shrink...

It's a shame there isn't a resource for all of the smart delivery releases and how they can work. Though I can understand why as it would be a lot of work for someone to partake. Would definitely need to be a community effort to make a list for future preservation so people know what to expect from certain physical releases.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

i've not watched the video yet but i guess the Smart Delivery games don't just let you ignore/bypass the upgrade and play/install the last gen version? if so that's dumb.

Click to shrink...

I believe not as all XB1 games on series x need an online connection to finish the install

 

[dlauv]

A needed video.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

So yet another video on a topic discussed to death back when this was happening.

Summary: If the game is not native to that console generation, it won't install.

 

[Dancrane212]

It's a shame there isn't a resource for all of the smart delivery releases and how they can work. Though I can understand why as it would be a lot of work for someone to partake. Would definitely need to be a community effort to make a list for future preservation so people know what to expect from certain physical releases.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that's unfortunate. I was poking around a while ago to see if there was somewhere to post my results (I mainly do it for my own curiosity) but the only site that it'd fit with, Does it Play?, doesn't appear to take submissions.

 

[Jawmuncher]

So yet another video on a topic discussed to death back when this was happening.

Summary: If the game is not native to that console generation, it won't install.

Click to shrink...

It'll install, the playability depends. Some Smart Delivery games will indeed play but not all.

I imagine it's based on
1. If the disc can fit both versions of the game (This is the case with Balan Wonderworld)
2. Where the game is installed (Not mentioned in the video but you can run XB1 versions offline on Series X if you install them to an external drive)

 

[Jroc]

I find it mildly amusing that the only reason cross-gen games are limited to 50GB bluray discs is the original 2013 Xbox One. The Xbox One S and Xbox One X both have 4K BD-Rom drives that can read triple-layer 100GB discs like the PS5 and Series X.

If they dropped the OG VCR machine they could probably fit all the versions on a single disc without the mandatory Series X download. At the very least they should let you play the old Xbox One version if you want.

 

[aisback]

Balan was surprising.

Good video from MVG as always

 

[Grips]

I never saw a xbox series x exclusive case!
The branding on the GTAV looks a bit rough lol.

 

[demi]

Not sure why he bothered blurring his gamertag only to have it visible on Balan Wonderworld anyway. Whoops

 

[KINGOFSHIBUYA Ltd.]

My discs give me errors all the time, and I had to reinsert them, or sometimes restart the console, and then they suddenly work just fine.

I wish Xbox would somehow just leave Microsoft, because I hate their software/OS's.

 

[tohlew]

While fortunate enough to have both a PS5 and Series X, this has become the thing that's worried me the most. I know I'm worrying about something that is somewhat into the future, and Xbox has been terrific about supporting previous gens, but there's still this speck of worry that the bottom will fall out and I'll lose access to a lot of my games. There's also the chance Xbox addresses this, but I'm unclear on how important they feel this is to them.

I'm kind of weighing my options of how to proceed with this gen if the possibility of me playing my games a decade from now isn't as clear as I'd like it to be. Not trying to be dramatic, I'm just a natural worry-wart, and this has been on my mind a lot lately. Feel free to talk me down from this ledge.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

It'll install, the playability depends. Some Smart Delivery games will indeed play but not all.

I imagine it's based on
1. If the disc can fit both versions of the game (This is the case with Balan Wonderworld)
2. Where the game is installed (Not mentioned in the video but you can run XB1 versions offline on Series X if you install them to an external drive)

Click to shrink...

1) yes, Balan is an example of the game being native on the disc. If a SD game disc has both packages it'll install because it has it. I probably should have maybe been a bit clearer but that was still my intent: the game contents are on the disc
2) with the Series, can you explicitly tell it to install a game to external with some more fine-grained control or is it more like you have to have an external and force it somehow like DF did back when they were testing Elden Ring in BC mode?

It's still a shit situation caused by a well-intentioned but also overbearing feature, but all of these flowcharts people are making to try and explain it when a simple one line explanation will do are becoming ridiculous.

 

[gothi]

Having done the research on this topic there's a couple of corrections required to MVG's video:

1) Game Pass games are playable offline on your home console, contrary to his offline test. If I had to guess why it didn't load I would wager he installed Quake when the console wasn't set as his home console and hadn't started it up since. Might go and double check this specific game though to make sure there's nothing funny going on with it.

2) Microsoft isn't the one who decides whether a Smart Delivery disc contains the Xbox One, Series console or both versions of the game, that's the publishers.

Other than those 2 points, a decent video.

Edit: Having looked at some of the comments on the video (that was a mistake) I wish he'd been clearer about the Xbox One versions and why it needs to connect online to install. Folks are still confused and think it's DRM.

 

[jroc74]

I find it mildly amusing that the only reason cross-gen games are limited to 50GB bluray discs is the original 2013 Xbox One. The Xbox One S and Xbox One X both have 4K BD-Rom drives that can read triple-layer 100GB discs like the PS5 and Series X.

If they dropped the OG VCR machine they could probably fit all the versions on a single disc without the mandatory Series X download. At the very least they should let you play the old Xbox One version if you want.

Click to shrink...

I always felt that the orig XBO got overlooked when MS made the One S as far as comparisons with last gen or cross gen games.

This is interesting indeed.

 

[Jawmuncher]

1) yes, Balan is an example of the game being native on the disc. If a SD game disc has both packages it'll install because it has it. I probably should have maybe been a bit clearer but that was still my intent: the game contents are on the disc
2) with the Series, can you explicitly tell it to install a game to external with some more fine-grained control or is it more like you have to have an external and force it somehow like DF did back when they were testing Elden Ring in BC mode?

It's still a shit situation caused by a well-intentioned but also overbearing feature, but all of these flowcharts people are making to try and explain it when a simple one line explanation will do are becoming ridiculous.

Click to shrink...

For the external offline bypass install, you can tell it to install there instead of the SSD. The forced aspect is that you can't be online to play the regular XB1 version on a Series.

 

[Pasha]

From what I understand about Series X backwards compatibility is that you need to download a fairly small update, something akin to a configuration file in order play it on the Series X.
Maybe one way that MS can avoid these issues with offline Smart Delivery games is to mandate that every Smart Delivery disc with an Xbox One version of the game should also contain the configuration file as well, this way the game can be playable offline, even if it's just the Xbox One version.

 

[gothi]

From what I understand about Series X backwards compatibility is that you need to download a fairly small update, something akin to a configuration file in order play it on the Series X.
Maybe one way that MS can avoid these issues with offline Smart Delivery games is to mandate that every Smart Delivery disc with an Xbox One version of the game should also contain the configuration file as well, this way the game can be playable offline, even if it's just the Xbox One version.

Click to shrink...

I like this idea, the only issue I could foresee is if later versions of the hypervisor/OS had different options (or fixes) which rendered the on-disc config obsolete and/or unusable. I'm still a big fan of providing these files for offline install, I think a combination of the two approaches would cover all eventualities.