30th March 2023, 9:51 PM
The original XBox didn't distribute any games digitally. They were all on disc, and only DLC and patches were digital. This was done on a per-game basis with the OS itself only providing the connectivity itself. I think the very small "micro" 360 games aren't available on 360, but just about everything else still is, and it's still a vast library you can purchase right now if you can manage to recover your account. That's the problem. Accounts are randomly going "bad" and requiring redownload, and many times some security check in the new XBox account backend fails to validate. They'll work just fine with 360 games on the One or Series, but not on the original system. It's a frustrating reality born of them refusing to do a few basic updates to match up 360 authentication with the newer methods they currently use.
All that said, I can't disagree. The store being shut down is a shame, but it all comes down to this. Individual corporations are the only things keeping track of what you legally own, and they can change their minds at any time and retract it at will. Very little you can do about it. Remember that Blizzard basically decided that Overwatch 1 doesn't exist any more. You can't ever play it again. It's gone forever, because it required an online connection and didn't have any sort of "local LAN play" option. This is why I get mad about that stuff ABF. It's planned obsolescence. I think some legal requirement of creating a national archive for digital goods, as well as records of what people own so they can download it from this national archive if they need to may just be in order. It'd be a rather literal library of congress for gaming, and it would require all companies stop embedding DRM of any kind in their games and send copies as well as patch data to this archive's servers. It would require that any downloading service have the ability to "plug in" the address of this archive and access it instead of just their own store exclusively. Now, I know the neoliberal gut reaction is "but the free market!" but the market isn't free right now. It's held hostage, and this is the result. This is how we free it.
All that said, I can't disagree. The store being shut down is a shame, but it all comes down to this. Individual corporations are the only things keeping track of what you legally own, and they can change their minds at any time and retract it at will. Very little you can do about it. Remember that Blizzard basically decided that Overwatch 1 doesn't exist any more. You can't ever play it again. It's gone forever, because it required an online connection and didn't have any sort of "local LAN play" option. This is why I get mad about that stuff ABF. It's planned obsolescence. I think some legal requirement of creating a national archive for digital goods, as well as records of what people own so they can download it from this national archive if they need to may just be in order. It'd be a rather literal library of congress for gaming, and it would require all companies stop embedding DRM of any kind in their games and send copies as well as patch data to this archive's servers. It would require that any downloading service have the ability to "plug in" the address of this archive and access it instead of just their own store exclusively. Now, I know the neoliberal gut reaction is "but the free market!" but the market isn't free right now. It's held hostage, and this is the result. This is how we free it.
"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)