12th February 2010, 4:01 PM
MS was keeping all the games that supported it online. It wasn't even any of the companies that made games supporting it.
What did I pay those yearly fees for if they're just taking it down?
The downloadable content is all back up, at least until it all goes down for good. I'm taking this time to get my original XBox loaded up with all the content I can find, so that down the line if I ever SHOULD get some of those old games for keeps, I'll have them prepatched and fully content... able...
At the very least, just about every single original xbox game that supported Live also supported system linking, so there are 3rd party solutions that'll work for that, it's just a lot more awkward.
These games being supported held back the friend list to never break 100 friends. I never had a problem with that, and neither has anyone else here I take it. I think I have about 16 or so friends max. However, there was an easy solution. Make XBox players able to "flag" friends in the list as "original XBox" friends. Only 100 can be so flagged, and only those friends will be sent to the friend list requests from original XBox games. Bam, problem solved and I'm still awesome.
Part of the problem was when they cancelled the project to emulate all the 360 games. That itself led to them being forced to stop adding more "XBox Originals". Selling classic games is still good money, and keeping those old games compatible was just good practice. They never did fix the horrible backwards compatibility for Marvel vs Capcom 2 (instead just porting it to their arcade).
Eh, oh well. The real frustrating thing was when they turned off support for Chromehounds. That was a fun game, and it was a 360 game. What gives? They could have kept that going much longer, and multiplayer is about the only reason to play it. Worse still, there is NO alternative to that. It didn't have system link. They even took down all the DLC. Now one issue is the "party chat" does defeat the in-game mechanic of "communication mechs" who's job was to keep everyone in contact with each other, but MS really could have found a simple solution to that. Simply allow games to disable party chat automatically if the developers feel it would defeat a communication mechanic in the game. One simple patch to Chromehounds later, problem resolved. Wow, I'm a genius.
At any rate, this is basically where problems with networks like Live come in. I don't expect a company to last forever. I do expect them to at least work with the consumer to allow them to find their own solutions should they cancel support for online modes. XBox original games have system link mode, so they're set up well enough. 360 games, very often, lack this mode entirely, so they're screwed. Further, downloadable content being removed is a real kick in the pants. I like to think the things I buy will be there forever. Taking them down when by all rights you could keep them up on your servers, without hurting anything when it's size is measured in kilobytes and the servers are up all the time anyway, is just cheesy.
And yes, once again I have to vent my frustration at "preorder exclusive" content deals. It hurts a game's long term sales if someone feels like they "missed out" on getting the full experience.
What did I pay those yearly fees for if they're just taking it down?
The downloadable content is all back up, at least until it all goes down for good. I'm taking this time to get my original XBox loaded up with all the content I can find, so that down the line if I ever SHOULD get some of those old games for keeps, I'll have them prepatched and fully content... able...
At the very least, just about every single original xbox game that supported Live also supported system linking, so there are 3rd party solutions that'll work for that, it's just a lot more awkward.
These games being supported held back the friend list to never break 100 friends. I never had a problem with that, and neither has anyone else here I take it. I think I have about 16 or so friends max. However, there was an easy solution. Make XBox players able to "flag" friends in the list as "original XBox" friends. Only 100 can be so flagged, and only those friends will be sent to the friend list requests from original XBox games. Bam, problem solved and I'm still awesome.
Part of the problem was when they cancelled the project to emulate all the 360 games. That itself led to them being forced to stop adding more "XBox Originals". Selling classic games is still good money, and keeping those old games compatible was just good practice. They never did fix the horrible backwards compatibility for Marvel vs Capcom 2 (instead just porting it to their arcade).
Eh, oh well. The real frustrating thing was when they turned off support for Chromehounds. That was a fun game, and it was a 360 game. What gives? They could have kept that going much longer, and multiplayer is about the only reason to play it. Worse still, there is NO alternative to that. It didn't have system link. They even took down all the DLC. Now one issue is the "party chat" does defeat the in-game mechanic of "communication mechs" who's job was to keep everyone in contact with each other, but MS really could have found a simple solution to that. Simply allow games to disable party chat automatically if the developers feel it would defeat a communication mechanic in the game. One simple patch to Chromehounds later, problem resolved. Wow, I'm a genius.
At any rate, this is basically where problems with networks like Live come in. I don't expect a company to last forever. I do expect them to at least work with the consumer to allow them to find their own solutions should they cancel support for online modes. XBox original games have system link mode, so they're set up well enough. 360 games, very often, lack this mode entirely, so they're screwed. Further, downloadable content being removed is a real kick in the pants. I like to think the things I buy will be there forever. Taking them down when by all rights you could keep them up on your servers, without hurting anything when it's size is measured in kilobytes and the servers are up all the time anyway, is just cheesy.
And yes, once again I have to vent my frustration at "preorder exclusive" content deals. It hurts a game's long term sales if someone feels like they "missed out" on getting the full experience.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)