Microsoft has removed the ability to purchase movies and television shows from the Xbox‘s storefront, leaving entertainment fans hanging. Despite releasing several high-quality games, like South of Midnight and Doom: The Dark Ages, and revealing the ROG Xbox Ally handheld last month, it’s been a rough year for the gaming brand as it suffered a devastating wave of layoffs earlier this month that saw the cancellation of games like Everwild and Perfect Dark, and even the shuttering of The Initiative, a studio started by Xbox in 2018.
Entertainment has been a part of Xbox’s digital offerings for quite some time. Microsoft’s “Xbox Video” program launched near the tail end of the Xbox 360 generation in 2012 and served as the successor to Microsoft’s Zune service of the 2000s. Xbox Video also served as a precursor to the Xbox One’s larger focus as an all-in-one entertainment box, a shift that marked doom for the console and put the Xbox brand in a position behind PlayStation and Nintendo that it’s still attempting to recover from to this day.
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It Looks Like Xbox Could Be Phasing Out Physical Games Entirely
Fans notice some potentially troubling signs that may suggest Xbox is starting to move away from physical copies in favor of digital-only games.
In a sudden move, Microsoft has ended its selling of non-gaming entertainment on the Xbox Store, no longer giving Xbox users the ability to buy or rent movies and TV shows. The Entertainment tab seems to have already been removed from Xbox’s digital storefront, but entertainment streaming apps like Netflix, Disney Plus, and the like are all still available under the Apps tab, as they aren’t part of Xbox’s native Movies and TV program. The good news is that those who have a collection of films and TV shows they’ve purchased will still be able to access them via Xbox’s Movies & TV app, which likely won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
It’s not known how many people have still been purchasing movies and TV shows on Xbox’s store, but it’s very likely that the rise of streaming services over the past half decade may have had something to do with the decision to cut wider entertainment from Microsoft’s digital marketplace. Despite some struggles, apps like Disney Plus, Netflix, HBO Max, and Prime Video have only become more and more commonplace and have played a hand in the ongoing decline of cable television. With Microsoft having walked back its Xbox One “all-in-one entertainment” branding more and more throughout the latter half of the Xbox One generation and the current Series X/S era with a larger focus on gaming, it’s not too surprising to see movies and TV being cut from the Xbox store entirely in the current state of the brand.
While Xbox users have assurance they’ll retain access to their non-gaming entertainment, it’s still always possible that access could be revoked too at some point in the future. For now, movie and TV fans who have collections on Xbox would be wise to make use of Movies Anywhere, a service that allows one to enjoy their purchased entertainment from a variety of different digital storefronts, including Xbox, in one place.
Microsoft
$499
Proprietary (Windows-based)
Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8 GHz
720p – 4K UHD
