Xbox is appointing someone to focus on physical games just to spite PlayStation

Microsoft is looking to hire someone to oversee the ‘launch of physical Xbox games,’ in another attempt to score a PR win over Sony.

Physical video games were always at risk of dying out once digital releases became more popular, but Sony’s decision to abandon them after 2027 still caught a lot of people by surprise.

The subsequent backlash has, so far, not been enough to force Sony to change their mind, but despite their history with all-digital consoles, it seems Microsoft is attempting to take advantage of the discord.

It now appears the Project Helix line of consoles will include at least one that supports physical games and a newly spotted job listing explicitly mentions that such games will continue to launch ‘across all platforms.’

The job listing was posted to LinkedIn over the weekend and is for an Xbox Games Supply Strategist, who would ‘coordinate the launch of physical Xbox games across all platforms, lead development and oversee execution of global supply positioning strategies across all stages of the product lifecycle, ensure that inventory is positioned to deliver working capital/cost/service goals, and oversee the sales and channel execution of those games.’

The promise of continued support for physical games seems largely pointless, given Xbox owners have always tended to favour digital over physical more than PlayStation fans, but no doubt Microsoft sees value in trying to take advantage of Sony’s difficulties.

Sony’s plans are unambiguously awful and there still remains demand for physical games, as evidenced by the performance of the PlayStation 5 exclusive Wolverine game.

However, had Sony not been suffering from a backlash, it’s hard to imagine Microsoft not also ditching physical games, since their attempts to promote a primarily digital console extend as far back as the Xbox One reveal in 2013.

There’s no specific mention of game discs in the job listing, which has sparked some suspicion that when Microsoft talks about physical game releases, it’s only referring to codes in a box. Even if organising that doesn’t seem a very high level job.

That’s not out of the realm of possibility either. Disc drives in general are reportedly on their way out and earlier this year, Microsoft announced a feature that lets you convert your Xbox game discs into digital licenses.

While this was billed as a means of game preservation, it’s easy to read it as a quiet admission that future Xbox consoles will be digital-only and this feature is simply ensuring you can access your physical library on newer hardware by converting it into a digital one.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that Xbox is the platform that sells the least physical games nowadays, partially thanks to Game Pass, which gives Microsoft more justification to ditch physical releases than Sony.

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