Like tears in rain...

As someone who has just recently gotten into Xbox 360 gaming, this sucks. Worst of all, it may also drive up the prices of physical games, which are dirt cheap at this time.

Not sure how/if this will affect applying title updates (patches) to physical games

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-05-08, 06:33:

As someone who has just recently gotten into Xbox 360 gaming, this sucks. Worst of all, it may also drive up the prices of physical games, which are dirt cheap at this time.

This is inevitable for every console. The best time to build your collection is after the next generation comes out and the retail stores dump their old stock cheap, and we're well past that for the X360 (e.g. 2017-18).

Credit to MS, they've been pretty consistent about putting various X360 games on sale (for a couple of bucks) over the past 5-6 years. But there's always the risk of your downloaded copy (or the console itself) getting wrecked and not being able to redownload them...

jmarsh wrote on 2024-05-08, 06:54:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-05-08, 06:33:

As someone who has just recently gotten into Xbox 360 gaming, this sucks. Worst of all, it may also drive up the prices of physical games, which are dirt cheap at this time.

This is inevitable for every console. The best time to build your collection is after the next generation comes out and the retail stores dump their old stock cheap, and we're well past that for the X360 (e.g. 2017-18).

Credit to MS, they've been pretty consistent about putting various X360 games on sale (for a couple of bucks) over the past 5-6 years. But there's always the risk of your downloaded copy (or the console itself) getting wrecked and not being able to redownload them...

Good news is, it is not that difficult (and almost kind of mandatory) to hack your XBOX 360 to load your games onto it in any other manner in the future now that XBOX 360 Live will no longer be a thing.. There's a reason why every OG XBOX is softmodded after all.

It was announced the end of last year. I've never bought anything digital for Xbox other than the Fallout New Vegas DLCs. Everything else is either physical or it was a free giveaway. I don't mind the store closing, adding payment options already doesn't work, you have to buy stuff on PC and download it on the console. As long as you can access the games you have and the achievements sync it's not too bad.

There are a few games I prefer to play on consoles over PC. Like R*, EA and Ubisoft games that require access/linking to their online content delivery/DRM platforms (Dead Space, Mass Effect 3, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 3, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, GTA 4-5, Max Payne 3, LA Noire).

I also like that I don't have to worry about games updating against my will.

I'm also thinking whether I should pick up an X360 E as a backup in case my S dies... or should I just get a One S. It's appealing because of the backwards compatibility, but at the same time a good chunk of my collection is not compatible (Colin McRae Rally: DIRT, Race Driver: GRID, Forza 2-4 Horizon, GTA 4-5, LA Noire, PGR4, Flatout: Ultimate Carnage).

I have some games that I bought digitally, which I now need to source physically as well I guess.. I can't rely on the XBOX storage to not fail indefinitely. I will get mad if I lose my Arcade games one day though. Not being able to play Geometry Wars would make me real mad..

sounds like they announced it in good time anyway, i guess there will be ways to back up downloads. to be honest, much as some of the games are good whenever i see a newer console being used it seems to require updates constantly. that put me off ever buying one. i suppose at some future point the 360/ps3 era will be emulated in totality and enable to running of ancient backups even if the system itself has failed,

After the closure, it looks like Microsoft also took down all of the Xbox 360 game manuals.

This is bad, because when you buy physical Xbox 360 games second hand (the only way you can now) sometimes they don't come with the manual. For example, this often happens when you buy a bunch of games in a lot, without having detailed pictures of each box. In the past, you could go to the Xbox Marketplace page for the game in question, and usually find a PDF version of the manual there. Not anymore, unfortunately.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-08-10, 19:48:

After the closure, it looks like Microsoft also took down all of the Xbox 360 game manuals.

This is bad, because when you buy physical Xbox 360 games second hand (the only way you can now) sometimes they don't come with the manual. For example, this often happens when you buy a bunch of games in a lot, without having detailed pictures of each box. In the past, you could go to the Xbox Marketplace page for the game in question, and usually find a PDF version of the manual there. Not anymore, unfortunately.

Even for games that are compatible with Xbone+? Odd.
I usually go out of my way to make sure the game has manual or "upgrade" if possible (so I have a couple of duplicates without manual). I was actually unaware there were PDF manuals, but then they surely are archived somewhere by someone.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-08-10, 20:51:

Even for games that are compatible with Xbone+? Odd.

As far as I can tell, yeah. At least I don't see a way to download manuals for those games anymore, even though you can still buy them digitally.

I was actually unaware there were PDF manuals, but then they surely are archived somewhere by someone.

As an example, here's an archived snapshot of the Splinter Cell: Conviction page from the Xbox Marketplace (courtesy of the Wayback Machine). There's a "See Game Manual" link which used to provide a PDF download. I can't find anything like that on the current page for that game.

That makes me think. The games you can still buy, if you buy them now, can you still download it on your X360? It was said the store shutting down won't block your access to the games you already had and you can re-download them. I didn't use my X360 in the past ~2 weeks so I don't know what are the actual changes on that front.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-09, 08:11:

I have some games that I bought digitally, which I now need to source physically as well I guess.. I can't rely on the XBOX storage to not fail indefinitely. I will get mad if I lose my Arcade games one day though. Not being able to play Geometry Wars would make me real mad..

From what I recall, the 360 allowed you to use a flash drive up to 16 GB in size as additional storage for games and add-ons. I'm not sure if that changed at all over the years in terms of capacity, but it would allow you to have at least a little bit of redundancy!

MadMac_5 wrote on 2024-08-10, 23:05:

From what I recall, the 360 allowed you to use a flash drive up to 16 GB in size as additional storage for games and add-ons. I'm not sure if that changed at all over the years in terms of capacity, but it would allow you to have at least a little bit of redundancy!

You can use drives much larger than that, 2TB is no problem... not sure about drives that have 4KB sectors or have more than 2^32 sectors. And it uses an ordinary FAT32 filesystem, you could plug the disk into a PC and back it up if you really wanted to.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-08, 07:44:

Good news is, it is not that difficult (and almost kind of mandatory) to hack your XBOX 360 to load your games onto it in any other manner in the future now that XBOX 360 Live will no longer be a thing.. There's a reason why every OG XBOX is softmodded after all.

I thought there was still no softmod or (software) jailbreak for the Xbox 360 even now. Has this recently changed?

Nope, you still need to RGH your console in order to jailbreak it.

But if you do so, you can use multiple 16TB harddrives with the FAT XL patch, for a total capacity of 48TB, which is more than enough to have the entire library of Xbox 360 games available on your console:
https://fatxplorer.eaton-works.com/2024/01/03 … -now-available/

Personally, the shutdown of the store is pretty irrelevant for me, since I upgraded my Jasper FAT with an internal 5TB drive many years ago. Enough games to last me for a lifetime.

Even with physical copies, they sometimes require patches to download in order to work at all. Unclear if those will still be available with the store closed?
(Looking at e.g. 'Batman' by Telltale, which for me did not work (on PAL) without a patch download, it just showed a black screen at game start.)

Patches are kept on separate Microsoft servers and are still available, for the time being.

MadMac_5 wrote on 2024-08-10, 23:05:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-09, 08:11:

I have some games that I bought digitally, which I now need to source physically as well I guess.. I can't rely on the XBOX storage to not fail indefinitely. I will get mad if I lose my Arcade games one day though. Not being able to play Geometry Wars would make me real mad..

From what I recall, the 360 allowed you to use a flash drive up to 16 GB in size as additional storage for games and add-ons. I'm not sure if that changed at all over the years in terms of capacity, but it would allow you to have at least a little bit of redundancy!

Anything up to 2TB, be it Flash or magnetic storage media, worked with the 360's USB storage feature. I have all my titles installed on a 2TB SSD and it didn't even go down to 1.5 TB.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2024-08-11, 11:02:

MadMac_5 wrote on 2024-08-10, 23:05:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-09, 08:11:

I have some games that I bought digitally, which I now need to source physically as well I guess.. I can't rely on the XBOX storage to not fail indefinitely. I will get mad if I lose my Arcade games one day though. Not being able to play Geometry Wars would make me real mad..

From what I recall, the 360 allowed you to use a flash drive up to 16 GB in size as additional storage for games and add-ons. I'm not sure if that changed at all over the years in terms of capacity, but it would allow you to have at least a little bit of redundancy!

Anything up to 2TB, be it Flash or magnetic storage media, worked with the 360's USB storage feature. I have all my titles installed on a 2TB SSD and it didn't even go down to 1.5 TB.

Glad to be corrected! I remember when it was first released that was the limit, but am happy to hear that it's much larger than that. I will make a backup of my 120 GB drive when I get a few minutes to do so!