Xbox’s technology chief has apologised after a roughly 20-hour service outage reportedly prevented some users from playing games they owned on physical discs. Scott Van Vliet said this was “unacceptable” and contrary to Xbox’s intended design, highlighting renewed concerns that technical failures and licensing checks can limit access to purchased games.

The outage on Monday was attributed to a licensing system failing to verify players’ entitlement to use games, and Xbox says an update will prevent a repeat. It follows a PlayStation Network outage on 24 July and comes amid wider industry moves towards downloads: Rockstar says physical GTA 6 copies will contain download codes, while Sony plans to stop releasing new PlayStation games on discs from January 2028.