Microsoft To Offer Xbox 1 Games For Download, Celebrates Live Anniversary

Joystiq is reporting that Microsoft's Xbox Live service will be offering some great party favors soon, as the company celebrates the service's second birthday. Starting at 12:01 a.m. EST on November 15th, and lasting for 48 hours, users will be able to download the most-excellent board game Carcassonne for free. They've also announced their intent to allow us to download original Xbox titles to the 360 console. "In its press release, Microsoft explicitly named Halo, Psychonauts, Crimson Skies and Fable as titles for the Xbox Originals initiative, but did not confirm exactly which games will serve as the jumpoff: 'This new service will launch with an array of blockbuster titles spanning the most popular genres from action-adventure to classic role-playing games.' Third-party reports claim the preliminary lineup will also include ... Indigo Prophecy ... Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3."

Comments

Question

[Kingrames]

Does this include the games that don't work on the 360 from the disc?
That would be nice.

Re:Question

[twistedsymphony]

It potentially could but it probably wont.

By offering them for download they can tweak and recompile the games to run natively on the 360's architecture so it definitely opens the potential to offer games that don't run from the disc. However considering they went for the most popular titles first when deciding what to add for Backward Compatibility it will likely be the same set of games they offer for download.

In all likelihood the Xbox 1 games you download will run much better than those played from a disc. It will also be interesting to see if they add new features such as achievements and leaderboards.

Re:Question

[zuvembi]

But will Barbie Horse Adventures be available to download?

Re:Question

[hidannik]

Psychonauts was added to the compatibility list in the latest update. I know, I've played it on the 360.

Hans

Re:Has potential

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Judging by your statements, you have clearly never played Psychonauts. Awesome Fkn Game. Here's hoping they eventually throw Chronicles of Riddick on there, as well.

Correction:

[CaseM]

The summary is incorrect. This is XBox Live's 5th anniversary: Link

Re:Carcassonne

[mythosaz]

I'm forced to disagree. Carcassonne makes a GREAT 360 game. While you may like or dislike it for whatever reasons you may have, online play optimized by a computer scorekeeper and rule-manager is fantastic. No "mistakes" playing on a 360. You can't make an accident setting a follower on the wrong land, etc. It's good for a number of the reasons that UNO makes a good 360 game -- without the vastly higher luck factor in UNO.

I'm only upset that they're not giving something ELSE to those of us who bought Carcassonne already...

Re:After the Wii

[spyder913]

Yes, probably, definitely, doubtful.

Re:After the Wii

[PixelScuba]

Sort of. Nintendo and the Wii found a way to charge us $5-$10 for games we purchased 15-20 years ago. I don't think the Wii network has Gamecube games available... which would be the most accurate comparison to what Live is doing here. Incidently, for the sake of honesty, it's actually CLOSER to what Sony has been doing with the Playstation Network and PS1/PS2 games.

The bigger news in this

[nuzak]

This means they're pushing digital distribution of actual games. These aren't Microsoft titles, so they've actually gotten agreements with the publishers. Meaning there's really no necessary distinction between these titles and new ones. Finally, a chance to put a stake in the heart of GameStop and their skeezy incompetent chain of pawnshops. No, I would NOT like to preorder, bitch!

And is this why XBL fell over last night? I had to unplug the goddam network just to be able to sign in to my own profile.

Re:The bigger news in this

[tcolberg]

This is awesome, except I only have a 20GB HDD. MSFT needs to make it possible for consumers to get more than 1 or 2 of these games at a time. Sure they might do a permanent purchase system and allow swapping of purchased goods, like the Wii does. On the other hand, why don't they just come out with cheaper external storage that isn't crippled? I know the cost of 2.5'' drives are partially what's keeping the 120GB 360 HDD's cost so high, so why don't they come out with their own branded external 3.5'' USB2.0 drive?

Re:The bigger news in this

[nuzak]

I got the Elite, mostly because I wanted HDMI outputs, and it has a reasonably big drive, so I don't have the problem, but I definitely hear ya. The hardware hack to take the drive out is pretty trivial, but apparently the 360 will refuse to format it at a higher capacity no matter what you put in. Sony on the other hand, lets you throw any SATA drive in, and it'll use it all. Funny thing that, I like the PS3 more than the 360 in every respect ... except as a freakin game console.

Re:The bigger news in this

[jollyreaper]

This means they're pushing digital distribution of actual games. These aren't Microsoft titles, so they've actually gotten agreements with the publishers. Meaning there's really no necessary distinction between these titles and new ones. Finally, a chance to put a stake in the heart of GameStop and their skeezy incompetent chain of pawnshops. No, I would NOT like to preorder, bitch! Two drawbacks: 1) you'll never be able to borrow your friend's game 2) you won't be able to resell it. Given that not everybody has fast internet service, we probably won't have to suffer the worst of this. We'll probably still see physical media alongside electronic distribution, the same way you can get a game off of Steam or in the physical store. While borrowing a friend's copy of a game is not theft in the normal people sense of the word, you can bet that the publishers would see it that way.

Personally, I still like the opportunity of finding good old games for a bargain price. I doubt that they'll drop a four year old game down to $10 or $15 on XBox Live the same way they would in the stores.

Re:From the people who want you to pay to play onl

[Ang31us]

I want them to get those $5/month through in-game ads, not out of my pocket.

Why should I give Microsoft $60/year after I paid Epic $50 for the game? I don't see why I should pay them to match me up with other gamers when we had services like Kali and Kahn back in the days of analog modems to do this for us.

I don't have a problem with a flat fee being charged for something like this, especially if it is built-in to the price of the game ($60 would have been a fine purchase price as well).

The recurring charge is what I have an issue with and this is also the reason why I have not played any of the MMORPGs like Everquest or World of Warcraft.

Microsoft wins twice

[SparkleMotion88]

1) Microsoft squeezes more money out of older games that people would otherwise buy used.
(and most importantly)
2) Microsoft sells more $180 hard drives to people who need space for all their new downloaded games.

I don't think this is correct

[Itchyeyes]

"I picked up Gears of War for the PC last week only to find that it required me to PAY for a LIVE account to play it online"

This isn't correct. You can play online on the PC with GFW Live Silver (which is free). What you don't get with the free version are Microsoft's True Skill matchmaking services, cross platform play, and multiplayer achievements (details here). Still frustrating, but not the same thing.

Re:From the people who want you to pay to play onl

[Blakey Rat]

You can play Gears online for free with a Xbox Live Silver account. It doesn't have all the features that a Gold account works, but your post is still wrong.

In any case, this is just nerd rage. If you don't want to pay for Xbox Live Gold, then don't pay for it. It's not some huge crime against humanity, or some huge debasement of your human rights, it's simply a game matching service with a yearly fee.

Of course, your nerd rage isn't even aimed in the right direction. If you have a real problem with it, take it up with Epic... Xbox Live doesn't have anything against a game using their own non-Live matching service. (Final Fantasy 11 does it, for example.)

I wish there were a way to do this with new games

[TheGeneration]

I wish there were a way to do this with new games. Right now I'm dealing with the stupidity of EBgames.com trying to get a game I preordered that was released yesterday...

I did pre-order on Super Mario Galaxy at EBGames.com at some point after I did the pre-order they attached a second item to my order, a cheap ass plastic "collectors coin" for the game that probably cost 1/100th of a cent to produce in China. Well, guess what, that coin is back ordered and as a result my game hasn't shipped. It's unbelievable.

I called their customer service and spent OVER two hours on hold waiting for somebody to pick up before I finally just hung up the phone. I can't believe they get away with this crap. Seriously.

I'm heading to Best Buy after work and I'm going to pick up a copy. It'd be nice if I could just download it directly from Nintendo.

Re:From the people who want you to pay to play onl

[morari]

I agree. Even more-so on films.

The problem is that one does not always know that here will be "micro transactions" to be made in the future. Say they begin charging a fee for bug fixes after release. You just bought a broken game and have no real recourse. I sure as heck wouldn't pay for a patch in any circumstance, but that would still leave me with a broken game and my money in the developers' pockets. I mean, geeze, I can't even find it in myself to justify paying a subscription fee for an MMO, and I certainly feel sorry for people that pay $20 for a new "Stuff Pack" every three months (between $30 expansion packs) to make their experience with The Sims 2 full.

And not to be disrespectful, but it annoys me to no ends when people shout about "speaking with their wallets". It allows one to maintain personal dignity, but doesn't change anything. We don't live in anything resembling a truly free market and if we did, the general public tends to be a mass of poorly informed consumers that make all of their decisions based off of obviously biased commercials. :P

Re:Has potential

[LKM]

No great game? I thought the games selection was great! Halo, Psychonauts, Crimson Skies, Fable and Indigo Prophecy are all fan-favourites. I think they intentionally took games a few a-list titels as well as games that people might have missed last gen, but that have developed a cult following. Very well done, Microsoft.

RE:I wish there were a way to do this with new gam

[trdrstv]

Right now, the only people moving this way are Sony. You'll note that Warhawk was available as a download purchase, as well as being sold in stores. Don't expect to ever see this feature for the Wii, though. The lack of a proper hard-drive means that you'll never see new commercial-quality games as downloads.

Yes, but I think Warhawk symbolizes how dumb corporations are in trying to pursue a new revenue model. The Downloaded version of the game (for $40 mind you) does not support local multiplayer, since in Sony's infinite wisdom "they did not pay for the right to play that game", It doesn't matter if they are sub accounts under the master that did buy them, they still can't play. So either you can pay $60 for a version with a bluetooth headset (and local multiplayer, and resellability, or the ability to loan it to friends), or a $40 version without the headset, or a $40 version that is locked to both the PS3 and the user?

The Wii could support USB hard drives, or SDHC cards (which are pin compatible with SD cards and offer sizes over 2 gig) with a firmware update so it is completely possible. Remember, it wasn't too long ago that (nearly all) Gamecube games shipped in 1.5 gig mini DVD's. Originally this was reguarded mearly as "wishful thinking" by the fan base, but with Final Fantasy Christal Chronicles was announced as a WiiWare title , something along these lines seems imminent.