That is the understanding here so far, that the offline usability of your game disc would not be affected.

The disc is said to still function normally, so nothing changes on how the discs currently operate 

Ahh okej cool

Clever way to soften the blow of going all-digital later. Impressive.

That's why you couldn't play your physical games when the license network was down! MS had this is the works already, the server outage exposed it, now they're launching it as a disc to digital program. Just for the convenience of not having to put the disc in the machine, you need to be always online.

Very nice feature for sure. In the console space if there's any aspect that Xbox easily bests the other two at it's how good their digital ecosystem is. With all the digital future now not far off this will become an increasingly important advantage though there's no way the other two don't improve their digital ecosystems at least somewhat. Xbox will probably remain the best at it however.

Its a fine feature, but the real question is will the Helix have physical discs? Otherwise this doesnt really do much without supporting OG Xbox and 360 games since the Series X is already BC with XB1 games.

Keeping a wary eye on this. Microsoft has been known to pitch one thing that sounds good for the consumer only for the reality to eventually be bad for the consumer.

Noo,will be digital only 100%.

Just like with the ps6 you can buy the physical addon for BC.

I am curious to see the technical details of this. They confirmed it doesn't change anything about how the disc will work, that is it should still work absolutely fine without internet connection. The best for the consumer would be that if you digitize your game, you can play it with or without disc and with no internet connection after you have claimed the digital license. But then there are the possible piracy loopholes - Selling the disc to someone would essentially mean you can BOTH play the game until first the new owner goes online and the licence is digitized and you go online and the digital licence is removed from your system. Xbox can decide to deal with this issue multiple ways:
1. Ignore the loophole, too few will know or care about this to be a real issue, and whoever does it loses so much Xbox functionality by staying offline anyway. The piracy issue is neglicible.
2. Digitized licences require a routine online (or disc) DRM check every month, or you cannot play the game.
3. When digitizing a game that has been digitized before you get issued temporary licences until the game is fully removed from previous owners libraries, then the licence get permanent.
4. A licence cannot be digitized a third (alternatively fourth/fifth) time until it is fully removed from one of the previous owners libraries.

I hope they go with option 1, in either case though, it is an improvement over what we got already. And even getting the PC version of Play Anywhere titles is a fantastic benefit.
The next question is - can I use my Xbox One to digitize an Xbox Series disc, to then play it on Series S or through Xcloud? Because that would be a significant benefit for physical ownership and affordable solutions!

And finally (a lot more speculatively), now that they have a system for transfer of digital licences, would they take the next logical step of also letting you sell your digitally purchased games? I doubt it, but that would be a huge game changer and something that could seriously move costumers over to Xbox side.