Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games Shutting Down 307
itwbennett writes "Giving no explanation beyond that it 'will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox LIVE community,' Microsoft's General Manager for Xbox Live, Mark Whitten, announced that as of April 15th, Microsoft will be shutting down its Xbox Live service for the original Xbox and its games. 'Cold comfort for those of you who still enjoy playing Xbox titles like Halo 2 with your friends,' writes blogger Peter Smith. But Smith notes that Whitten's announcement does hint at some form of restitution for those affected, encouraging users to check their LIVE messages for more details and opportunities."
So I guess you would call it (Score:5, Funny)
Xbox Dead... goodnight everybody, I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitress.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes it has to go down as deprecated, no matter when, no matter how, no matter why. Microsoft can and Microsoft shall, that's the price for being at their hands. The reward? To get to use their products.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would make far more sense if they had stopped selling XBox games first.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing's stopping you from playing single player Xbox 1 games. If anything now nobody has an excuse not to mod their original Xbox!
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the XBox games being sold still tout their multi-player capabilities. Now if they reduce the XBox game prices to reflect the loss of capabilities and relabel them to suit, this would be less of an issue (but still wholly relevant to those who purchased XBox games recently for their multi-player capabilities).
And, for the record, I don't own or use the XBox or XBox 360.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Game companies can't have it both ways (they can try, but eventually customers will wise up).
With 'private' servers they host (and only they can host) and even various DRM techniques; they've produced games that require the servers to be up and running for games to continue to work.
That game you legal purchased and own....you can only expect it to work as advertised, so long as the company continues to keep their end up and running.
It's easy for people to dismiss concerns of 'Ummm - what if the shut down the servers' and simply say, 'Come'on Microsoft isn't going anywhere!'. But, even in the short time that online gameplay can be expected - we've seen TONS of games lose functionality.
Apparently, every Xbox game that was playable on Xbox Live is now crippleware.
Maybe you only play games for 6 months and move on...but some people don't. They enjoy replaying their games. I'll play through FF1 every 2-4 years and that came out in 1987. It's still fun, at least for me. Sure, only a select few games get that level of replay value; but it's *your* game. Or, it should be.
This is all just another step towards having to 'rent' your games in order to play them. And sitting back and idling dismissing it as 'no big deal' just invites the problem to continue.
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I would actually rather rent games, but that's because I consider them disposable except for maybe the super classics. I don't have any need to "own" licenses for music, games, television shows, or software. I pay for some in each category because there's no way to always rent.
I think a lot of the reason we pay for games, movies, and music is because we want them to run on a variety of devices, and the only way to do that is with a physical copy or DRM. But, for me, I think it makes more financial sense to
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We can't sit around and hope that everything will be maintained for ever..."
You wouldn't have this problem on PC, anyone with a server or internet connection can host their own.
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Not when the server list or auth servers go down. You might be able to still connect to ip address directly, but that means you need to find lots of friends to come play with you (especially in team based games where you need something like 16+ players for it to be fun).
It's time to fun to newer better games. Or just stay on single player games. Everyone playing multiplayer games has to know that at some point the player base will die because people move to new games.
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It's time to move to newer better games, I mean. Wonder where that fun came from.
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However as the long and varied life of Half-Life (the original game) proved, it's not impossible to update an old game with new matching software as time goes on.
Additionally, and ironically in some respects, as Allegiance [wikipedia.org], a game initially developed by Microsoft, shows it's possible for a PC game to survive well beyond when the company that supported it turns everything off.
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I think you're right for most games, but not for all. Some games actually think long term such as Eve online.
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Well, yeah, if by that you mean once Eve Online's central servers go away, the entire game completely and absolutely stops, since the game can't exist in that case. After, say, Descent 3's central server lists went away, the game could still be played via informal means and direct IP address connections.
I used to be part of a community for a relatively obscure online game whose central server lists were long-abandoned by the parent company, but thanks to a registry hack and someone getting hold of the orig
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You wouldn't have this problem on PC,
Sure you would. Try playing Tabula Rasa online right now, that's a PC game.
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That is an MMO big difference. You're comparing apples to oranges.
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No he isn't really. MMO's and multiplayer games are a lot alike. Only thing separating is that servers are usually ran by the company, and that the world generally has a lot more players in single environment. Hence the name massively multiplayer online game.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes he is really, when an MMO shuts down it takes down ONLY the mmo and anyone who gets into MMO's knows this before hand since a game can only maintain the servers for as long as there is paying customers, stand alone games are nothing like this. Hence his fallacious comparison.
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Original Xbox had MMOs on it.
But ok: try playing Starsiege: Tribes then. The master server is down, and without it it can't connect to any game servers that may still be up. (If any are.) I believe Tribes 2's master server is down as well.
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
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Thank you sweet merciful lady of chaos. I used to play Tribes all the time, and wasn't aware you could do this. Wonder if there are still any Shifter servers running...
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And yet there are still servers for the 10+-year old Counter-Strike.
In fact, Counter-Strike (classic, not Source) is still one of the top played games on Steam. In the top two, no less. The other game in the top two? Conter-Strike: Source. And Team Fortress 2 places a distant third.
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Whoops, my bad. Modern Warfare 2 bumped CSS and CS (and TF2) down 1 slot each on Steam's stats [steampowered.com] (I also thought I hit preview while I went to check on those numbers...)
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Give that another 6 months or so
Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)
Not any more, see MW2 for example. Also, watch what happens when Steam shuts down.
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard to make a case for forcing a company to continue to offer a particular good or service(unless they contractually obligated themselves and are violating that contract); but the fact that product design is moving in the direction of deprecation = death is extremely disturbing.
Historically, with PC games, the creator may or may not have offered a matchmaking service or servers at all, but there was nothing stopping 3rd parties from doing so. Increasingly, through a combination of DRM activation and closer tying of matchmaking services and multiplayer servers to the core game, it is becoming difficult for 3rd parties to step up(and, if they do, they often place themselves in the line of fire with respect to some DMCA or equivalent legal hassle). On the hardware side, it is a matter of driver specs and parts. If driver specs aren't available, deprecation is death more or less as soon as the next major OS comes out. If service guides/tools/parts are tightly restricted, deprecation is death as soon as the parts dry up.
The fact that products get deprecated is fine. The fact that the severity of deprecation is markedly increasing, and promises only to increase further, is very, very troubling.
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really?
You think this would happen if it was on a PC and for things that allowed dedicated servers?
I'll give you a clue: it wouldn't.
Welcome to what happens when non-technical console users get shoved into the world of pc gaming/become more techie as a result of MS's poor business choices. I hope people realize this applies to apple and any company/services that uses DRM (such as windows live gaming or whatever it's called) as well.
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Sorry to seem ad hominem. I never meant you said that, I'm just providing a reply here so that hopefully people will read it. Hopefully people will realize what went on is a direct example of the issues people don't realize exist.
Really, you can only hack a game so much without dedicated servers - the reason is that you don't know what the server side data is. Even if you know what the client is requesting it isn't telling you what the server does with it.
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Well this is just fine.
Microsoft should now open the SDK and open the XBox protocols so somebody else can take over support for their games.
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Microsoft can and Microsoft shall, that's the price for being at their hands. The reward? To get to use their products.
High tech masochism?
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We can't sit around and hope that everything will be maintained for ever...
Well, if the games had been designed differently, it wouldn't be necessary for them to be maintained forever.
What ever happened to a good ol' dedicated server running on your LAN?
Punish Them (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to know what the cost is for buying games from companies that control their platform this tightly, now you get to see it.
If it bothers you, you have one option. Cancel your xbox live subs. Ebay your xbox. Buy your games on a different platform.
They didn't even set out to screw you over and make the games you (thought you) paid for (largely) worthless. You just gave them so much power that they practically did it by accident.
The answer is the PC games model we already had, where the platform is open and the infrastructure isn't something you are forced to buy from a single seller you are locked to for life (xbox live).
Yeah, I know - what is one slashdot post going to do to stop the console juggernaut? Answer: nothing. But don't say I didn't warn you. Give a thought at least to patronizing developers who make and sell their games the old-fashioned way. Especially the ones who support open standards and open platforms like opengl and linux - there are a few.
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Re:Punish Them (Score:5, Funny)
That line had me all sorts of confused until I realized that Fender is a guitar company, not a supplier of stripper apparel.
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I, for one, will gladly accept those consequences since for me they are more than outweighed by the benefits of having things as easy as possible while the game is supported. No drivers, no installation woes, no licensing issues - it all just works out of the box. If that means that after a couple of years the product is no longer supported, so be it. Disposable income I have, but free time to do things I enjoy I don't have enough of.
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Well your options are kind of limited, Sony threw out backwards compatabilty completely with the slim, none of the current models of PS3 sold have backwards compatability or even the "other OS" option.
Nintendo dropped online support for the few gamecube games that supported online back in 07.
That leaves...PC gaming I guess? Well unless you have certain EA titles or Capcom tiles or certain MMO's, etc.
Take it a step further (Score:2)
Refuse to buy games that hand over the control of whether you may play them to its maker. That affects far more than just XBox Live. There's games that have mandatory online registration that wave the same sword of damocles above your head. They turn off the server, your game DVD becomes little more than a costy coaster. Same applies to games that only allow connections to the game servers of the makers (and I'm not talking MMOs here exclusively). And of course it affects all console gaming platforms IIRC.
I
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Does it mean I miss out on some of the latest and greatest games? Sure! But there are also a surprising number of games companies that
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Do you grow your own food, or cede control of that to others? Steam does a better job of being my games librarian than I do. Sure, it may one day shut down my ability to play all these games I paid for, but that's balanced by the fact that I sometimes lose game media (or other storage). So far I've lost or discarded a few games, and Steam hasn't lost any.
Being such a control freak that you won't use a service you don't control, for fear they might choose not to provide it in the future, means leaving soc
Re:Take it a step further, now back a step (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes sense. It is annoying when I can't eat my food because they took down the server and now I can't activate it. It is even worse that I can't give my food to someone else or resell it; I should have purchased it on DVD or downloaded the installer. Perfect analogy.
You can't keep track of your stuff, thus those who prefer having a local installer that doesn't need activation or an internet connection must leave society. Makes sense.
I
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Or the non-hypothetical gamer who owns Halo 3 and an Xbox 360, but also enjoys playing Xbox 1 games online from time to time.
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Devil's Advocate:
Let's assuming Microsoft's reason for doing this (friends list limited to 100 friends) is correct. Let's say that instead of cutting off Xbox games, they instead offered this ballot to all Xbox Live members:
Choose one:
1) Raise friend list limit to 1,000 friends
2) Continue playing original Xbox games online
Which do you think the game-playing audience would have chosen?
This seems to me to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of decision. There's nothing you can do to make every h
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That said, I believe that any original XBox game that works on the 360 hardware ought to be supported for as long as the 360 games are. But, it
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The answer is the PC games model we already had, where the platform is open
If only that were the case with -ALL- PC Games. Sadly, it is not. If Blizzard were to drop off the grid, not only would WoW become unplayable (obviously) but also their other titles, such as Starcraft and Diablo 2. And it happens to everyone. Sierra got bought out and now half their game hosting servers are shut down. A handful of games from the 90's no longer have any server support. Some Ubisoft titles come to mind as well.
It's easy to bash a console - especially one operated by Microsoft, but you aren't
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Exactly! The old model was great. We need to make these companies be punished and we must raise awareness! We must aware people about the danger of letting our lives get into other company's hands! What if this continues like this in the future? What if they'll be able to track our every move? What if they RULE THE WORLD? A bit too cataclysmic, but we really need to put them in their place.
Or you know, you just stop buying their games.
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Spread what word? You mean like "No, you cannot buy this fun Modern Warfare 2 game because its multiplayer could stop working in the future! No, no matter how much you would like it now and say its fun and exciting and rocking! No! Nooooo!"
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Notice that I am not a "fascist pig" stating that they CANNOT.
Planned Obsolesence (Score:2)
I'll be sure to keep this in mind before purchasing any games through Xbox Live Marketplace.
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Since when do you have to connect to Live to play your games offline?
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Ever since Microsoft decided Xbox Live Marketplace content should only work offline when played on the particular console to which it was originally downloaded?
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Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for almost all of them failing within a few years. And instead of sending back a new model that doesn't fail as much, they send back a repaired model with the same flawed design. (At least that's what happened to my friend with a first generation Elite. I got a Falcon back for my Falcon as well.)
Life expectancy (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article, Halo 2 has a 5 year run on the internet. Wow, thats a LONG time!
Doom is still being played online.. that's about 17 years and still going?
So from this we can see, if you happen to be attached to a particular game, then in future you get to be dispersed by the company for loitering.
How many people here play chess?
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I still haven't gotten the hang of the Laser Rooks and Transforming Bishops yet.
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I loved the original Day of Defeat mod, I had many great moments with it and fun favorite servers. Then at some point the patches balanced things I didn't like and new features that I didn't like were added. Then came DoD:Source and players moved. Does it really bother me that much? No, I just moved to new games. I had my fun times already.
I loved my old girlfriend, I had many great moments with her and good favorite restaurants. Then at some point things changed and new features that I didn't like were add
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Damn, I was all set to prove you wrong. It seemed like Doom came out well before 93....
From wiki:
In gaming:
* Doom (series), a series of first-person shooter video games developed by id Software
o Doom (video game), the first installment, released in 1993
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Mid-December '93, to be precise, and ISTR that the full version started shipping in Jan '94.
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You could play Doom over the Internet by 1995 via Kali [wikipedia.org] which allows IPX network games to work over TCP/IP. Apparently there were earlier precursors to Kali that also enabled Doom over the Internet. Nowadays you would probably just use a port like ZDoom which has Internet play built in.
Is anyone surprised? (Score:2)
No service lasts forever, and this is why buying a product with a required on-line component is a bad idea.
How many times do people need to be taught this lesson before it sticks?
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Hahahaha (Score:2)
Shutting down for no good reason at all. Its like flickr, or Facebook, or GMail just disappearing.
Don't trust the cloud.
That stuff should never happen. I bet you can still find people playing Duke Nukem 3d on the internet.
I played some Battlefield 1942 a couple months ago. Its nice to feel nostalgic.
Let some non-profit group take it over, or release it to the public so people can run their own servers.
What a bad design. Those who make the games should be able to have their own servers and release Linux
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I believe you're thinking of Xlink Kai. It was tunnelling software with some kind of centralized server that had a friends list and stuff that fooled the Xbox into thinking remotely tunnelled LAN players were local. I remember setting it up, but I don't recall using it to play a game with anybody since I didn't know many people with an Xbox.
In order to serve you better... (Score:4, Insightful)
... we have decided not to serve you at all.
What do you say? That doesn't make any sense? Look! Shiny! New stuff for you to buy, Mr. Consumer!
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That makes perfect sense to me.
"See, you're served much better with open PC-based gaming. Now get rid of your console."
Dedicated servers (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is why you want player controlled dedicated servers for your :p
favorite FPS or RTS game. A game studio will eventually shut down the central
one because of the lack of $$. Oh and I am still waiting for a game studio to
try the monthly fee route for their central server
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Oh and I am still waiting for a game studio to try the monthly fee route for their central server :p
Kind of like.... World of Warcraft?
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PC Gaming is coming back in style (Score:3, Interesting)
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...until Steam goes down or your EA key doesn't validate (etc, etc, etc). This is becoming endemic to electronic gaming as a whole not just console gaming.
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
- Love Steve Ballmer
Better PR (Score:2)
I think they would be better off if they were honest, instead of hiding behind public-relations speak. How about:
"We are shutting down XBOX live for old games because the economy sucks, and we either provide service for old games, or service for new games. We can't afford infinite amounts of computer power. It would be awesome to provide service for older games forever, sorry. We hope we have provided service for long enough to warrant continued purchase of future XBOX titles. Have a nice day."
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How about: We can't afford infinite amounts of computer power.
Well, that would not be true. Microsoft can afford to pay for the original Xbox live to continue working, they're just choosing not to prod people to buy Xbox 360s.
After all, I find it hard to believe that the cost of keeping the services for the original Xbox live games is a material item in the Xbox division's balance sheet. Do you? Do you really?
Replayability and licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
As an avid gamer, I hate the way modern games are moving away from the old model of pay once, play forever, and moving toward licensing. It may not be called licensing by the producers, but that's exactly what it is. How many of us still enjoy a nostalgic game of Donkey Kong, or Super Mario Bros.? I'm sure there is still a group of gamers out there who enjoy a multiplayer game of Quake or Command and Conquer.
Ten years from now, a few friends would like to play a game of Halo 2, but they won't be able to. Just last year, I sank a good 30 hours into the original Sid Mier's(sp?) Colonization, like I have been doing since 1996. I don't know the details about Xbox Live, or Halo 2, but if the game requires a centralized Live server for multiplayer functionality, then it simply won't work. In effect, you are only licensing a portion of the game for a certain period of time. Sure, you can code your own server from scratch, like the Star Wars Galaxies fans have done, but that still eliminates 90% of the fans who will one day want to replay the game that they loved.
Not again! (Score:2)
Its like when GEnie shut down the Air Warrior servers!
(did I just date myself?)
Seriously, though. Halo2 is fun, but its 2010. Play Halo3. All of the rest of us know its identical to Halo2 only with better graphics. You'll barely even notice the change if you're on an equally old TV.
And it sure sounded to me like they aren't happy they're making the move and, unlike most companies that do it, are planning on interacting with the affected people *somehow*.
I know people on Slashdot hate Microsoft for just abou
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Its like when GEnie shut down the Air Warrior servers!
(did I just date myself?)
Seriously, though. Halo2 is fun, but its 2010. Play Halo3. All of the rest of us know its identical to Halo2 only with better graphics. You'll barely even notice the change if you're on an equally old TV.
And it sure sounded to me like they aren't happy they're making the move and, unlike most companies that do it, are planning on interacting with the affected people *somehow*.
I know people on Slashdot hate Microsoft for just about everything, but once you pull your head out of that hole, I don't see how this is worth grabbing the pitchforks for. If you aren't one of the people impacted, why do you care so much, and if you are *they said they're going to work with you about it*. So why are you bent out of shape *before they have*?
So you're saying Halo 3 is exactly like Halo 2, but because Halo 2 was released so long ago they should just buy a new console and Halo 3 to continue playing the same game?
And then you're saying people need to pull their head out of the hole and get over their hatred for Microsoft?
...
XLink Kai (Score:2, Informative)
Supports original Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, and Gamecube.
It's free to use, and the source code is freely available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLink_Kai [wikipedia.org]
HA HA HA Serves you suckers right! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just another reason to buy a computer.
I will admit I too had an Xbox. I long ago let the subscription expire. At one point I had to make the decision: Buy a new console (likely the 360) or spend more and get a new computer. I am 100% glad I sent it on a new computer.
It was just last week that Sony announced that "hey guess what? Even though you bought the PS3 thinking online networking would be free, well not anymore suckas!".
Now MS is saying they are shutting down service for old hardware, making many games pretty useless (as they were sold as online games with limited single player options).
That's the problem with consoles, they (MS and Sony, and Nintendo) own everything. They can do whatever they please. Don't like it? Too bad. Your option is to buy the other guys console, who is going to screw you just as much.
So buy or upgrade your computer where you can actually own your own stuff, and join in the big boy games.
Also there are less 12 year old shouting profanities at you (notice I only said less, you can only do so much!) and generally being asshats.
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It was just last week that Sony announced that "hey guess what? Even though you bought the PS3 thinking online networking would be free, well not anymore suckas!".
I must have missed that. Sony is still advertising the Playstation Network as "100% Free" [playstation.com]. Where did they announce the change last week?
Makes sense to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Listen... xBox v1 has been around for almost 10 years. They stopped selling the thing 4 years ago. Look at any Microsoft support life cycle.
Windows 98
- Released June 1998
- Discontinued 2002
- Extended support ended 2006
---Total shelf life - 8 years
Windows ME
- Released December 2000
- Discontinued December 2003
- Extended support ended 2006
---Total shelf life - 6 years
Windows 2000
- Released March 2000
- Discontinued June 2005
- Extended support ends this summer
---Total shelf life - 10 years
Microsoft is right in line with their typical support life cycle for the xBox. Even though its a different product line, Microsoft is still Microsoft. They cannot support an aging product forever (even if by support I mean maintain a server for it)
To move forward what choice did they have? (Score:4, Insightful)
People have complained for years about the 100 tag limit on friends list and other seemingly stupid limitations put into place. The reasoning offered by MS then was that in order to maintain compatabilty with original xbox games the limitations in the original live service had to follow over to the 360.
MS has decided after 5 years of the 360 to remove the legacy caps by removing support for a platform that hasnt been sold in 5 years. You cant really have it both ways...
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Not only that, but the main reason we'
Already a trend (Score:4, Insightful)
But - Quake 2? Still kicking. Released the same year as JK, too, IIRC. Microsoft continues to do this; they entice game developers with easy online/multiplayer libraries and then kill the service to force people to upgrade. I fear for all the Games for Windows games; that's why I'll never buy a title that uses Games for Windows Live. 10 years down the road, all those games will be permanently offline too, as will (likely) all this trash like CoD42 which uses an even smaller and even more restricted network. Meanwhile, I'll still be playing Quake 3 (and hopefully RAGE, now that it's not being published by EA).
DirectPlay. Live. When will developers learn?
Limitations of the old live service (Score:2)
My understanding is there are certain limitations to the old Live service, specifically the number of friends. By deprecating the old service they can remove those limitations and let people have more than 100 people on their live friends lists.
Thisis a GREAT thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the demand for a "fake" Xboxlive server just became reality.
Someone will hack one together in short order and post the code out there.
I love it when Microsoft creates a need for someone to completely hack a service they were providing and decided to end.
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I'm going to stay within context, and assume he means 'the launch of features to access these services from xbox live, which have been popular for the services themselves', not that he means that the services couldn't have happened without xbox live.
I know i didn't bother with netflix until it was easy to use via my xbox. facebook and twitter are less useful (my phone works better there, although the xbox makes a decent facebook-photo-browsing tool)
Reading it again, you're probably right... (Score:2)
...assume he means 'the launch of features to access these services from xbox live, which have been popular for the services themselves', not that he means that the services couldn't have happened without xbox live.
Good point -- that's probably what he's talking about. Given that, I'd be curious to know why anyone would twitter from an Xbox...
I'm trying to think of a scenario and -- like you're playing Madden 10 or something and you pop out of it and say "Shit yeah, TD Eagles." Wouldn't it just be easier to use your cell?
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Seven years ago we laid out our vision for the connected console when we launched Xbox LIVE. We believed then that the power of the Internet to connect people would revolutionize living room entertainment. It started with amazing multiplayer games, and we’ve since seen that bet pay off again and again with the launches of Xbox 360, Marketplace, Netflix...None of this would have been possible without the success of LIVE as a multiplayer gaming network.
If you read it literally, they're claiming success for Netflix in general and facebook, twitter, and last.fm as features in Xbox 360.
I'm just saying I'm not as dumb as your comment suggests. This statement does literally claim that Xbox live resulted in launch of Netflix, if you read it literally.
Re:battle.net still lives (Score:4, Informative)
not only that, but you can play those games over a direct IP connection for free without involving battle.net. So when battle.net eventually does shut down or upgrades beyond compatability. You can still play those games with your friends. However this will not be true for starcraft 2.
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Legacy code from the MSN network somewhere late 90's.
On another note - I was on the MSN network before that and I have 120+ friends in XBox Live now.
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And more importantly, its replacement was released in '05!