Xbox 360 games Will No Longer Be Part of Xbox Games With Gold In October (theverge.com) 9
Microsoft is planning to remove Xbox 360 games from its monthly Games with Gold offer in October. The Verge reports: The software maker has started emailing Xbox Live Gold subscribers to warn them of the change, noting that the company has "reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalogue." Games with Gold is a monthly benefit for subscribers of Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Microsoft hand picks free games each month, and all Xbox 360 titles are playable on the latest Xbox Series X / S consoles and Xbox One.
Microsoft's Xbox backward compatibility program briefly returned with 76 new games last year, but the company made it clear it had "reached the limit of our ability to bring new games to the catalog from the past due to licensing, legal and technical constraints." That would explain why it has now reached the limit on new Xbox 360 titles for Games with Gold. If you've already downloaded or redeemed Xbox 360 games through Games with Gold, this change won't impact those titles. This just means starting October 1st, Microsoft won't be adding any additional Xbox 360 titles to the Games with Gold offering.
Microsoft's Xbox backward compatibility program briefly returned with 76 new games last year, but the company made it clear it had "reached the limit of our ability to bring new games to the catalog from the past due to licensing, legal and technical constraints." That would explain why it has now reached the limit on new Xbox 360 titles for Games with Gold. If you've already downloaded or redeemed Xbox 360 games through Games with Gold, this change won't impact those titles. This just means starting October 1st, Microsoft won't be adding any additional Xbox 360 titles to the Games with Gold offering.
anyone that likes old shit (Score:2, Funny)
probably pirated this stuff a long time ago. Almost no one is quitting Gold because of this.
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Many of these games are included in the cloud streaming part of gamepass anyway. No eyepatch and peg leg required.
They ran out of catalog (Score:2)
A while ago they decided all 360 titles would be backwards compatible if given on Gold. Meaning they not only need to negotiate a free* giveaway, but they also need to get the rights to "republish" the game.
(Don't ask why. The gaming industry is very picky with licensing rights. Microsoft even failed to keep their own racing title Forza 7 on digital thanks to expiring licenses).
I wish saner people were there though. Many gems like 007/James Bong games, many Naruto/Dragon Ball games, or X-Men Origins Wolveri
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The full compatibility lists for each console are here: https://xbox.com/backcompat
Re:They ran out of catalog (Score:4, Interesting)
That was blocked by Nintendo. The rights to 007 Goldeneye were owned 3 ways - Nintendo, Rare and the James Bond franchise. When Microsoft bought Rare all those years ago, they made Nintendo a really lucrative deal - basically Nintendo would have the rights to republish all of Rare's games on Nintendo platforms for virtual console and such, in exchange for the rights to Goldeneye. Nintendo of America's president thought it was an awesome deal, but when he ran it up to Nintendo of Japan, they nixed it - basically along the lines of "We don't help competitors".
Microsoft made Nintendo an offer too good to refuse, and yet they did.
Well, kinda sorta. The Xbox 360 had a limited Xbox emulator in it, which was downloaded, but only worked with some games. Since practically all OG Xbox games were disc-based (there was a basic version of Xbox Live Arcade but it wasn't big). So all Microsoft needed to do was provide an emulator.
For the Xbox One and such, they changed the emulator architecture to be more flexible, but they also had to account for the fact that the Xbox360 had a lot more downloaded games.
Thus, there was a problem because a user could've bought a game digitally or on disc, and thus backwards compatibility would mean both should have an opportunity to play the game. Furthermore, it wasn't possible to separate the games since they had the same ID and were basically the same thing, especially when it came to updates and patches.
So to use the emulator meant Microsoft pretty much had to get the permission of the game publisher to allow those games to run on a machine that it wasn't licensed to in the beginning.
So in the end, the disc is used to validate a license to the game if you don't have a digital license to the game, but effectively, Microsoft is distributing the game again and thus they need the license.
It's one of those tricky things brought about because if you bought a game digitally, you should have the same rights as if you bought it on disc. So to say you can play a game if you have it on disc, but not if you bought it digitally, would be massively unfair and cause all sorts of legal issues. Plus, digital console editions with no disc support, etc. etc. etc.
Thus int he end Microsoft needed permission to make backwards compatibility a thing. Note that the Xbox One to Xbox Series generation leap was much narrower, and Microsoft probably rewrote their licensing agreements to make it much more flexible on backwards compatibility. Plus, given for the most part the machines are the same internally and a game really just a fancy Windows application does make it easier for backwards compatibility, but there are enhanced versions of the games which often require assets that Microsoft is providing.
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And... 360 PowerPC binaries are statically recompiled into 360 AMD64 architecture:
https://www.eurogamer.net/digi... [eurogamer.net]
Yes, there is a small 360 emulator downloaded (even with the boot animation), but they also recompile binaries, too. They also added texture compression format support into hardware (360 had nvidia GPU while later consoles are AMD).
I think they needed all these for the maximum compatibility and performance. Which led to the current situation.
(Did not know about Nintendo, one more reason to love
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That's a lot of complication that exists only because of choices made by government legislators/bureaucrats, whose main job for the past 300 years has been to write laws that enable monetization of resources.
Rather than make a different set of IP choices that would simply remove the bureaucratic complications, it's easier to just send anything too-complicated-to-monetize down the Memory Hole.
And... (Score:2)