TL;DR: A study found many physical game discs require downloads to work: about half of 78 Xbox Series X titles needed patches, 34% of 792 PS5 games required fixes or missing content, and 75% of 48 Switch 2 games were fully playable offline. Disc ownership, resale, and preservation are thus increasingly uncertain.
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It looks like owning the disc isn’t quite the safety net gamers assume it is. A new study from Does It Play, cited by Ars Technica, tested hundreds of physical releases across PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch 2, and found a sizable chunk can’t be played as intended straight off the disc.
The study tested how many physical games needed additional downloads to work properly, or to add missing content. The Xbox Series X came out worst. Only half of the 78 tested titles were complete and playable without any download. Another 12% could be finished but were buggy or missing content, leaving 38% that needed a patch just to work properly.
Its competitor, the PS5, fared better, though not by much. Out of 792 tested games, 34% needed a download to fix game-breaking issues or unlock content missing from the disc itself. Switch 2 held up best at 75% fully playable offline, though its sample size was much smaller at 48 titles.
This certainly isn’t happening in a vacuum. Sony is already phasing out disc production for new PlayStation games starting in 2028, and a recent Xbox server outage briefly locked players out of physical disc games too, proof that a disc in your drive doesn’t guarantee access once servers get involved.
However, physical media still has real upside. Discs can be resold, lent out, and are usually cheaper than digital purchases, and Sony still sold 70 million of them last year alone. But, if half your Xbox library needs an internet connection just to boot up properly, the argument that discs equal true ownership gets a bit shaky.
Which Xbox Series X titles in the study required downloads just to boot or to fix game-breaking issues?
How many and which PS5 games tested needed a download to unlock content missing from the disc?
For the Switch 2 titles tested, which ones were fully playable offline and which required patches?
What examples or specific incidents linked Xbox server outages to players being locked out of physical-disc games?
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Preservation is also a big worry here. Sony’s disc-less future already has the PS6 skipping a drive entirely, and once servers for these patches go dark, some of these games may become unplayable exactly as they shipped, no matter how many physical copies are sitting on a shelf.
