Microsoft's Xbox One S All-Digital Edition has a glaring issue

Microsoft recently announced a new Xbox One All-Digital Edition that it said would ship without a disc drive, requiring players to use Microsoft's online store to purchase games and other content.The Xbox marketplace has robust support, and Microsoft has an affordable game-subscription service, but without discs or other hard copies, gamers have little control over what happens to the games they own.A quick look at history shows the problems that can arise from relying on digital ownership of a game.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.Microsoft's Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is set to arrive in stores Tuesday as the cheapest Xbox One model yet, but it also represents a major shift in the Xbox business model. The Xbox One S All-Digital has no disc drive, so players will need to rely on the Microsoft Store to build their library of games.The Xbox marketplace has robust support to back the all-digital movement, and Microsoft offers an affordable subscription service with hundreds of games. But without discs, gamers will need to go online regularly to access their collection — and trust that Microsoft won't decide to stop hosting video games for download in the future.Microsoft has supported the Xbox brand for nearly two decades with no signs of stopping, but digital content is often subject to complicated licensing agreements, and content owners rarely have recourse if their platform of choice decides to limit or cut off access to purchased content.For example, Microsoft's terms of sale state that the company “may terminate your account or use of the store at any time for any reason, including, without limitation, if you are in breach of these terms of sale or the store policies, or if the store is no longer operated by Microsoft.”Essentially, this means that if Microsoft decides to sell or shutter the Xbox brand, neither your account nor your purchases are guaranteed to stay intact. Considering that players can spend hundreds of hours, or hundreds of dollars, on any given game, there's some reasonable concern that their favorite content could suddenly become unavailable.At the very least, players who commit to buying a game on a disc can be sure the game will be playable so long as the disc still works. Since the Xbox and Sony's PlayStation opened their online marketplaces, dozens of digital-only releases have since become unavailable, and discs and cartridges have endured as the best way to preserve classic games. Once Xbox or PlayStation pulls access to the download, a digital game can become lost in the ether.There's no shortage of digital-only games that have found themselves stuck in limbo: