[Xbox lost its digital-only battle, but still won the war](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/xbox-one-xbox-series-x-s-always-online/) | Digital Trends by Tomas Franzese for Digital Trends Tomas’s piece on how Microsoft still got the future they wanted through the lens of the major Xbox outage last weekend pulls back the Game Pass curtain. Last weekend, Microsoft was caught [behind the curtain asking for no one to pay attention](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-RQxD4Ff7dY&t=62). > Microsoft’s servers are so intrinsic to the Xbox Series systems that server issues can lock players out of single-player digital games they bought with their own money. That implies there is hidden DRM for any digital game purchased or redeemed through Game Pass on Xbox, even if the game itself is a single-player adventure. Access is one of the biggest red flags in the age of digital ownership, and the temporary Xbox outage highlights why many people see it as a problem. I am surprised locally downloaded, purchased games were not playable. This needs to be rectified by Microsoft immediately. It should also work with downloaded Game Pass games. The console should have the pertinent information/key about the users subscription. If my Nintendo Switch can let me play NSO games offline, my Xbox should too. This is why I chose both new consoles with disc drives. I wonder if those worked over the weekend. As a small bit of irony, I like how the complaints stemmed about being always online came from people online. > Obviously, this confrontational approach did not go over well with hardcore gaming fans, especially in 2013 when casual online gaming wasn’t as ubiquitous, and we didn’t necessarily connect every device we owned to the internet. Vocal gamers on the internet just weren’t interested in a platform that restricts what the player can do via an online connection…