Facepalm: Microsoft is continuing to address the recent Xbox network outage, and while it has already given its explanation of what happened, there's one aspect it's still investigating: why some people couldn't play their physical games during the incident. The Xbox network went down on the evening of Sunday, July 26, preventing users from launching purchased games, signing in, or completing new purchases. Now, Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet has told The Verge that although physical games are subject to entitlement checks, these shouldn't have prevented them from working during the outage. Disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design," Van Vliet said. – Scott Van Vliet (@scottvanvliet) July 28, 2026Microsoft has at least identified part of the problem.