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Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

birchtree.me

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Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#232

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

I've lost count of the times my buddy and I wanted to play coop, and I was forced to log in to my ms account for a split screen game. I remember back on the original xbox, and x360, using 'guest' just worked. Forcing people to login for couch coop is asinine.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#233

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

This is the same effect of wanting to watch an old film... If you want to do it the legit way, you will have to face all kind of hurdles, starting from finding a service provider that might have the film, then forget about all the modern audience "edits" they put on these things, at times the quality isn't even good, the audio tracks are messed up... So you either give these jackals at least 30 to 60 minutes of your…

The streaming service is a Cathedral: You've paid your tithe to the temple of HBO Max? Marvelous, please come in, my child and gaze upon our wonders! What? James Cameron's True Lies? It is not in our collection, please remain here and we can watch Commando together! It's just as good!

The digital copy is a Bazaar: You wander the booths of Prime Video, iTunes, and... Fandago!?! They assure you their copy of True Lies is the best! Ignore that other booth... you may save $2 but are you certain that video will still exist in a year?

And the whole time you know that just under the bazaar is the Underground/Black Market where all is preserved and all can be had, but you'll need to work for it.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#234
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree with you with this example. Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Usually true with a film or TV show through the "forums" too, but not always. Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat w…

How would a downloaded file buffer? That sounds more like streaming sites, which yeah are bad. But if you download a movie or season of a show in advance I don't think you'll have the same issues. Language ones or missing subtitles maybe - you gotta check those as the download finishes and before you put it on a media server.

> How would a downloaded file buffer

I've no idea. It happens sometimes and only seems to happen with certain fils. In this case I'm sure it's a jellyfin issue, but this just comes down to having to debug while someone is waiting to watch - which is exactly the time I don't want to.

As for language/subtitles it's true if it happens from the start (which I agree, is usually true) but occasionally the downloads get weird midway through.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#235
post #146

Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…

Optical media capped out at 4 layer blu-ray (~128gb) which I'm not even sure that consoles can reliably read. So my theory is that GTA 6 is somewhat larger and they really didn't want to invest into engineering a solution for multiple-disc or something when ~everyone downloads their games nowadays anyways. So in some sense, the true physical release "can't" exist. This doesn't apply to most anything but GTA 6 is the…

Baldur's Gate 3 is already there. It's over 120GB and IIRC PS5 games only use up to triple layer. There was no disc release.

The current Gran Turismo is around 140GB. I think it has a disc, but it'll only have like half the game on it.

Final Fantasy XIV is around 200GB now, and they're talking about dropping PS4 support because drive capacity is going to be too low during the patch cycle for the next expansion.

Also, median US internet is over 100Mb/s now, so downloading a game is faster than installing it from a BluRay reader. And then you don't have to get up and change discs to change games...

Regardless, most console owners buy their games online. Otherwise there would be more games than Funko Pops at GameStop. They also have frequent sales, unlike retailers.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#236
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the one reason I don't use Steam. I'm not saying Valve is evil or anything like that. But GOG's transparency and commitment to DRM-free games should be the market standard.

DRM-free was a nice idea 20 years ago, the problem is that it doesn't scale. There is just way to much media out there to keep track of and especially with games you are looking at frequent updates and patches, that your DRM-free backup won't get, unless you turn backup up a full time job to keep track of it all. If GOG went down tomorrow, those games would be gone just the same as the Steam ones, since I gave up try…

DRM is a software layer that restricts your ability to run a given program, in this context it's specifically a form of access control. It has nothing to do with anything you just said.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#237
For most modern software, you are not buying a product, you are buying a window of service. You are entering into an agreement that the software will be supported for a reasonable amount of time. Bugs will be fixed, you might get some additional 'free' content. Games got to the point of being so large and expensive, they crossed this threshold long ago. A single player offline game like The Witcher 3 has had what, about 30 updates? And those games are constantly being dwarfed by seasonal, micro-transation games. The single release game was an endangered species a long time ago.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#238

Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…

Pitacy is back in the menu for me. That "if buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing" sounds corny and is legally void, but hell if morally it is not justifiable at this point. When I want to support the creator I go and "buy" the thing, but I also go and pirate anyway.

> That "if buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing" sounds corny and is legally void, but hell if morally it is not justifiable at this point.

A law isn’t by default just, so when it turns from a safeguard into a manacle it is only logical, fair and correct that we rebel against it.

If buying does not imply ownership, then piracy cannot mean theft.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#239
> But owning a game on a disc today isn't really the same thing. It's still just a license, and Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo can either intentionally or, in this case, unintentionally prevent you from playing that game, even if you own the physical copy.

I am pretty certain that there are different legal requirements nonetheless. The author kind of tries to mitigate the danger of big corporations forbidding physical media. Does he think that these corporations have the good of the people in mind? Or are they more interested in milking their cash cows?

Thankfully I am not the target audience anyway. I don't give my money to these greedy corporations to begin with. Them disowning people further here, by killing physical media, would just have been another stepping stone towards a movement away from these big corporations anyway. I don't have time to play games anymore anyway due to old age, but if I would I'd much rather support Indie games - with physical media.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#240

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

I recently bought far cry 3 on steam and spent 20 minutes post-install trying to log into my ubisoft account between forgetting an old password, 2fa across multiple devices and a badly broken captcha system.
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