Re-buying games on the Series S already installed on an External Hard Drive

SovereignTyranus · Dec 13, 2020

Forgive me if this has already been asked and answered already, I am new here and this is my first time posting. Though I did not find a post regarding my question.

As the Xbox Series S does not have a disc port, can the Series S play Xbox One/360/OG games that were already installed by a disc that were transferred to an External Hard Drive? Or possibly even games that could somehow appear on the Series S's internal
storage?

I was reading up on the new consoles, and it had said that games that were on your xbox one would appear/come with you onto the new consoles.

I have Doom 2016 and the Mass Effect trilogy as discs, and they're installed on my 4 TB External Hard Drive. If I just plugged my Hard Drive into the Series S, could I be able to play those games? Or do I have to re-buy those games on the Store on the Series
S and reinstall them? Or do I just have to re-buy them only?

90% of my games have been bought digitally, but my favorite games are on disc. It would be pretty neat if this worked.

Thanks.

:)

Smwutches

You would have to purchase them digitally in order to be able to play them. Otherwise, you would need the disc in order to prove you have a license for the games. If you do purchase them digitally, you don't have to re-install them, but there will probably
be an install for licensing.

Obsessive Power

Hi,

When you run a game on either an Xbox One or Series X/S it first looks to see if you own the licence (digital). If you don't own a digital license the console will check for a disc. But as the Series S has no optical Blu-ray Drive it will display a message
and the game will not run.

Other installed games - regardless of how they got on the storage device - that also can be purchased from the Xbox Store won't need to downloaded again. Purchasing an already installed game will convert it to a digital license.

But you will have to buy any pre-installed games if you don't own them digitally.

Germangamr91

I installed them on my old xbox one and transferred them to the external hard drive so I know they are on the hard drive

All my installed games appear correctly as installed on my Xbox one if I connect the hard drive to it. But when I connect the hard drive to my Series S, most of the installed games appear but about 9 of them do not. The missing games appear as ready to install on my Series S

Obsessive Power

Hi,

External hard drives are not fast enough for Xbox Series X|S titles. Unfortunately you can't play these games off slow USB external hard drives. They need either be installed internally or to an optional Xbox Series X|S Expansion card.

Wannabe Takumi

Can I install the games on an external drive then connect that to my series s?

I really don’t want to have to re buy Madden 22(no dual entitlement for my version), WWE 2020, and MLB The Show.

Re-buying games on the Series S already installed on an External Hard Drive