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Xbox boss would ‘love to find solutions’ so games aren’t lost when the 360 store closes | VGC
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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If you're not intending to sell them for profit any more, then just let us download and emulate them.
It's not a hard problem.
Well, it is a bit harder than that. Most of the games are not mate by Microsoft but by other companies so they can't just decide to give them away for free. And even if they could get everybody to agree to that, they would still need to provide the infrastructure to download them which would be just as much work as keeping the old store running.
Yeah, fair. But they can do it for first party games and maybe try to convince other publishers to do the same.
With the infrastructure cost, I don't think a simple site that allows downloads yet doesn't need logins or payment info would break the bank, especially for Microsoft. But if it is an issue, they could probably only run it for a few months and let fans set up their own mirrors.
Or Microsoft could even do what GoG does. Charge a token ($5-10) fee to purchase a ROM to download to cover costs. Also might make it more appealing to other publishers since some money is better than no money.
There a lot of consumer friendly solutions to this issue, but I bet the outcome will end up being $70 compilations or remakes...
The first party games are pretty much already available as MS brought them to S/X back cat already. Only things missing are stuff like Forza where the car and music lisences expire. They're not the games that are an issue preservation wise.
heads begin exploding at Nindento HQ
It's not even their company and just the suggestion here has their legal teams on high alert and ready.
I avoid using their actual name so I don't get an automated cease and desist in the post
You really thing not referencing them or making any content related to any of their IPs will prevent them from sending a C&D? They'd probably send one out to everyone if it didn't cost them any money to do so. God forbid you hire some plumbers, wear a red shirt, or draw something in the shape of a star.
Who's going to maintain that infrastructure of free old game downloads? Companies don't like to work for little benefit. It's way harder than you think.
Drop the ISOs on torrent, problem solved. No need to reinvent the wheel, just do what the pirates have been doing for decades at this point.
This problem was solved in the 90s with usenet and torrents
And BitTorrent is already used to distribute games! Blizzard uses BitTorrent to distribute WoW, for example.
Small correction, though - BitTorrent wasn’t released until 2001.
they haven't been using it for many years now
Hmm, I had trouble finding official confirmation of that but did find a HN comment by scrollaway on this post who said they use “a proprietary http-based protocol called ngdp.” They also shared a document on the protocol and a commenter replied with a link to a deeper discussion of other ways to solve similar game patching distribution problems (amusingly, scrollaway also participated in that discussion).
Isn't some of the issue there that just because they don't have plans now doesn't preclude them from deciding down the line to do something? If they release that all for free then later ports or things of that nature directly lose value.
Companies that don't actively market/license their IP should lose it fairly quickly and be required to release it to the public domain.
I'd agree with that, there should be a stricter standard on that stuff across the board with media.
Do you not understand how IP we works? MS publish a minimal amount of the actual titles on the 360, the remainder belong to third party publishers that woukd never agree to this. MS have already tried to bring the whole 360 catalogue to the S/X back cat but can't get a lot of these publishers to sign off on the adaptations needed to get them running.