I was just watching Attack of the show on G4, and before you go hailing the indecency of that channel that attempts to be a gaming haven, hear me out. This was part of their general news flash segment, and apparently Microsoft has decided with Sega to release 50 or so Dreamcast games over Xbox Live Arcade. They will be released in handfuls and be available for around $10 bucks, which translates to 800 points.
It will be interesting to see what games they decide to bring out considering that there is a 50 MB limit on Arcade games. Chu Chu Rocket seems like an obvious choice, but I find it difficult to see how they will be able to squeeze these games into this size limit. I guess time will tell. Jet Grind Radio anyone?
Hell, Microsoft should just buy Sega, make their consoles play old Sega game discs, and pump money into the company so we can get Shenmue 3/PDS2/adecentShiningForcegame and then win the market over in Japan! Success!
Very true, but this will probably rejuvinate the online features in those games, and games that originally didn’t have some will probably be outfited to include some sort of multiplayer over Live. Leaderboards at the least, since that is a requirement.
While being able to download classic Dreamcast games onto the Xbox 360 is a worthwhile idea (especially if you can once again play some of these online over LIVE), there are a number of questions that I think need to be asked regarding the whole virtual game store idea:
Supposing, your Xbox 360 or harddrive dies, will you be able to re-download the game for no additional fees?
Can the games be played on other Xbox 360s, or it is “attached” to your physical console?
If the answer to question 2 is yes, if you want to take the game around to a friends house and play it on his/her Xbox 360, is it just a matter of plugging the external harddrive into another 360 or there some kind of DRM-based system in place? How does this effect copying?
What happens to your games if your Xbox Live account is banned/deleted? Does this effect what you can do with your downloaded games later on?
When the next Xbox comes out, will you be able to transfer or re-download for no additional fee the games to the new console. I’m thinking of long-term preservation here.
Will the Xbox 360 play Dreamcast games in high definition?
I’ve never used Xbox Live Marketplace before, so these are just some issues that some of you may be able to help clear up.
1.) Sadly you cannot re-download your games for no extra charge, once it’s deleted you’re out of luck as far as I know. So if your harddrive does die, you would have to shell out some more money if you want all those games back.
& 3.) I have no idea. Never tried, but my guess is that it should be possible to play games on another console. As far as copying goes, I do believe there is a system in place preventing you from copying downloaded games.
4.) I don’t think your account getting deleted or banned will affect any of your games, just that you obviously can’t play them online anymore. Everyone can always download games and be connected online. I think the banning only applies to actually playing a game over Live.
5.) Really thinking ahead aren’t you! If you can’t somehow transfer your games and profile, then Microsoft is stupid.
6.) Yes. Since all games are required to be rendered at 720p by default. Even Joust gets drawn at that resolution!
That’s what I know atleast, correct me if i’m wrong.
Yeah and people still insist on going on Ebay to pay ridiculous ammounts of money for an item you could eaisly find down a car boot sale. But they don’t because its called laziness.
It would be nice if Microsoft implemented a system like Value’s Steam here. If you buy games through Steam, a record is stored on the server, and you can re-download those games (and updates for them) as many times as like, so long as you provide your username and password. If you have to pay again to download a deleted game, then that treats the software license almost like a rental, rather than something you own. This isn’t what game collectors are looking for.
Well, apparently I was not up to speed on all things Xbox Live, since I have now found out that if you accidently delete any game, you can go back into the Live Marketplace and re-download your games for free since the servers save your purchase history.
This was answered by IGN in one of their Febuary 10th mailbag. It’s the last question on the page.
