Microsoft Wants To Pay Xbox One Players For Preowned Digital Games

Microsoft wants to let Xbox One gamers trade in digital games as if they were physical copies. A Microsoft survey of players spotted by WindowsCentral on Monday asked whether gamers would be interested in a system where players could sell back their games for 10 percent of their value, given to the player as store credit.

The move would essentially mean that players could give up access to previously bought games in exchange for money. This is a major advantage physical copies have over digital copies, where selling media is a breeze.

The move would help alleviate one of the major concerns about gaming’s shift to digital, particularly in an industry dominated by the used game market. Players are used to being able to trade in games at brick and mortar retailers like GameStop, getting a fraction of the original cost back once a game is completed.

Announced sooner, it could have solved one of the major concerns surrounding the original Xbox One design. The console would have tied both digital and physical games to players’ Xbox Live accounts, so the console could play games without the physical disc inserted in the drive.

The proposed system would have let players sign in on another Xbox and bring all their games with them, but trade ins would have been far more complicated, with Microsoft leaving it up to publishers whether or not they wanted to allow physical trade ins at all, and even then only with participating retailers.

Microsoft faced strong backlash from gamers used to being able to swap their favorite titles. Less than a month after detailing how the new system would work, Microsoft dropped the restrictions entirely in June 2013, well ahead of the console’s launch in November of that year.