If you owned a physical disc for an Xbox One or Xbox Series X title, you were anchored to hardware with a disc drive. But Microsoft’s new Disc-to-Digital Licensing initiative currently testing with Xbox Insiders finally bridges that gap, allowing players to insert an eligible physical disc into a console, claim a digital license directly to their profile, and play the game disc-free.
While the feature is a massive leap forward, Microsoft hasn't released a definitive list of compatible titles. Enter xct.live, a community-run tracking database that has quickly become the ultimate hub for mapping Xbox's new digital frontier.
At its core, xct.live is a crowd-sourced database designed to track and verify which physical Xbox discs successfully grant a digital license. As Xbox Insiders test hundreds of titles in their backlogs, they submit real-time reports, creating an active compatibility matrix for the entire gaming ecosystem.
Instead of guessing whether a physical collection can be converted, collectors and achievement hunters can search individual titles, view publisher participation, and check error reports before popping in a disc.
The platform is already surfacing key breakthroughs:
- Delisted Gems are Back: Confirming that delisted physical games such as Deadpool or older Forza Horizon entries can still yield valid digital licenses even if they aren't purchasable on the Microsoft Store.
- Tracking Publisher Participation: Providing a clear view of publisher opt-ins (confirming working titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Witcher 3 while tracking opt-outs).
- Xbox Play Anywhere & Handheld Synergy: Helping players identify which physical console purchases unlock PC licenses for handhelds like the ROG Ally or Lenovo Legion Go.
Behind the Code: A Conversation with xct.live’s Creator
While xct.live is making waves for its Disc-to-Digital tracking, the platform’s scope is far larger than a single featureset. I reached out to the founder of xct.live to discuss the vision, origin, and hidden capabilities driving the platform.
What is your ultimate goal with XCT, and what inspired you to start it?
"My ultimate goal is to create a community that brings together all the different types of people who play and enjoy Xbox. Not just collectors. Not just achievement hunters. Not just casuals. Whether you want multiplayer, single player or story, I want people to come to the site and be completely siloed if they like, just tracking their own progress.
That happens through the website first, then the mobile apps, the Discord server, and whatever other avenues open up. It can also be a place to discover new genres, games and franchises you've never tried, to get suggestions, and to broaden your gaming landscape. A portal of discovery."
The project didn't start as a public platform it began as a massive personal indexing project.
"I originally created it as a collection tool. We're approaching 15,000 games, and I had a Google spreadsheet with 90 tabs tracking different marketplaces, regional stacks, rare games, delisted games, which games were physical and which were digital, and which were approaching server shutdown. It was a personal project. It wasn't even hosted online. You downloaded it and ran it on a local server, and it indexed everything that way.
Then I bought the domain, it went online, and there was some early excitement around a few of the features. Specifically the entitlement and collection scraping, which let you cross-reference your digital collection across multiple gamertags against the live Store listings. So you could see what you were missing. If you like a specific genre, say racing games, Metacritic 90 plus, that you don't own digitally, or things on sale that you don't own, you get a nicely formatted list and purchasing becomes much easier. You optimise your spend."
While most users flock to the site for collection auditing and compatibility lists, xct.live packs heavy-duty features under the hood designed for technical preservationists and achievement completionists.
What are some things you want people to know about your project that most people won’t know?
"One thing most people don't know, and I need to do a better job of showing this, is Power Tools. It's an advanced download for Pro members with a set of tools that work inside Windows, and it's refined over time. As we find new ways that console commands get left in games, we grab them.
The feature that got the most buzz at the initial release is downgrading Xbox and Windows games to previous versions. Sometimes a developer or publisher pushes an update that breaks achievements. Players report it, but the studio has run out of money or the team has been let go, and the game is left broken on the store forever. Those achievements get flagged as unobtainable or discontinued. This is the first one-click way to downgrade some of these games back to a working version."
Beyond fixing broken achievements, version control opens up vital game preservation doors.
"It's also a very strong preservation tool. You can go back to version 1 of a game and see how it originally shipped. Sometimes the story changes, sometimes cutscenes change, and being able to look at that is going to matter more and more. And it ties back to the console commands and cheats: sometimes they ship by mistake and get patched out. Downgrading lets you use them again, unlock achievements faster, and make the most of your playtime."
Looking ahead, the developer is expanding the platform into a unified ecosystem launcher.
"What I'm working on right now is Game Hub. It shows your digital library across Games for Windows Live, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Xbox games, right in the browser alongside your collection. It hooks into Power Tools and the system tray companion app, so you can launch a game with one click. You can also filter to the games you don't own or don't have installed, start an install from there, or browse the store and pick it up."
The Future of Digital Ownership
As Xbox continues rolling out Disc-to-Digital functionality beyond Insider tiers to the broader public, xct.live is positioned to become an indispensable staple of the Xbox ecosystem.
By pairing community-driven licensing verification with advanced preservation utilities like version rollback and multi-platform library syncing, xct.live is doing more than mapping a new feature it’s ensuring that physical media and digital ownership can comfortably coexist for years to come.
XCT Link