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

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

#701

Post by gertrunde »

f6v wrote: post #258
keiferski wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is strange to me that people are re-discovering this today, in 2026. Microsoft has always been half-baked, even in the 80s and 90s. Heck, my parents basically raised me (20+ years ago) by running a business fixing problems with Microsoft products for their clients.

I guess it’s surprising because how ubiquitous their products are. You’d expect them to be of better quality considering everyone is using MS software one way or another.

The ubiquity is the problem I suspect.

If customers buy the product regardless of the quality, then the manufacturer has no incentive to improve the quality.

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

#702

Post by inigyou »

frollogaston wrote: post #607
inigyou wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"le reddit blackout" was the beginning of the end for reddit, so idk what you're trying to imply here.

I think the implication is that the blackout did nothing, and Reddit didn't care. Like this message that really says "I will buy the PS5 anyway."

Reddit indeed didn't care. Reddit also slowly collapsed starting from that point in time. It's latest investor information said it's not getting much Google traffic any more.

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

#703

Post by maigret »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #443
keiferski wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>considering everyone is using MS software one way or another. I don't think I've used a MS product in at least a decade. At least that I was aware of. Edit: did some research and I have used LinkedIn. Other than that, nothing.

No GitHub at all?

VS Code is hard to escape as well.

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

#704

Post by rightbyte »

mikrl wrote: post #492
sumtechguy wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'always online' has created a whole new set of buggy from a lot of companies. For example cyberpunk is NOW a playable game. Launch date was a very mixed bag. 'fix it after launch' ugh.

> cyberpunk is NOW a playable game I never had problems with cyberpunk but I think I know why: I built a new PC right around its release and it was good enough to play it smoothly on 4K medium or HD ultra. When I checked to see what 4K ultra looked like, the graphics latency caused a bunch of scripting to fall apart and the game glitched really bad. IIRC the console release was notorious for bugs, so I assume console…

> When I checked to see what 4K ultra looked like, the graphics latency caused a bunch of scripting to fall apart and the game glitched really bad.

That is ... interesting. The game use wall clock waits or something instead of "game logic tic" wait?

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

#705

Post by badpun »

flohofwoe wrote: post #308
badpun wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2026 a console is a streamlined PC that can't be used for anything else but games - but the gaming experience is easier and less frustrating.

> but the gaming experience is easier and less frustrating ??? It's not the early 1990s anymore where you had to fiddle with autoexec.bat and assigning IRQs to get your DOS games to run. The only "downside" of PC gaming is that the hardware isn't subsidized like game consoles are, so you're upfront investment is a couple hundred bucks more. But then you don't need a subscription for multiplayer gaming, and PC games a…

There's plenty of people for whom handling a PC is difficult. E.g. various popups (windows update, antivirus, microsoft nagging about microsoft account, printer nagging, "disk almost full" nagging, OneDrive file sync nagging etc.) alone are too much for my Mom, whereas she's handling her iPad (for example) just fine. Also, there are issues specific to gaming on PC - every time there's a technical issue with a game (which in itself is never a thing on consoles), the forum recommend installing different version of the video driver. It may or may not work, but it leaves you with an evening of technical troubleshooting instead of gaming.

Not to mention that games on Steam do break, esp. older ones which are no longer actively maintained [1]. I haven't heard of such fails on consoles, probably because they're a much more stable platform.

[1] E.g. Steam's Civ 5 has been breaking for a couple years now, going into low-res video settings and refusing to bring them back up. Why? Who knows! The only thing that seems to work is using "repair files" option in Steam every time that happens.

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

#706

Post by inigyou »

annzabelle wrote: post #635
acaloiar wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ever there was a case study in the complexity of "market forces", it's Microsoft's Windows' resilience to pressure from clearly superior options like MacOS. As a life long Linux user, I'd like to believe it's the year of desktop Linux, and Linux is a clear threat, but...maybe next year. Naively one would think that the single greatest market force on Windows would be its users making informed decisions and migrati…

I moved to New Zealand from the US recently, and the tech industry here is mostly on .NET and Azure. My coworkers keep looking at me like I'm a moron because I've always deployed to AWS via Jenkins and don't know their weird homebrew system to deploy things to our on prem windows servers.

I'm not surprised New Zealand in particular has a lot of self-hosting because of the distance-related latency.

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

#707

Post by inigyou »

acaloiar wrote: post #581
brightball wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically my experience. I switched to Mac with the Intel change around...2006 maybe? Converted my entire family. I personally switched to various flavors of linux around 2016-2017 because I wanted more hardware options. Eventually, my son got into gaming and eventually we let him get an Alienware laptop maybe 2-3 years ago. Then my wife had to get one for work this year. It's like nothing has improved in 20…

If ever there was a case study in the complexity of "market forces", it's Microsoft's Windows' resilience to pressure from clearly superior options like MacOS. As a life long Linux user, I'd like to believe it's the year of desktop Linux, and Linux is a clear threat, but...maybe next year. Naively one would think that the single greatest market force on Windows would be its users making informed decisions and migrati…

Ignoring anticompetitive behavior, Windows is the only thing that works on most computers and is usable by most people. If you buy a computer, and it's not a MacBook, Windows is the only option.

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

#708

Post by inigyou »

opan wrote: post #678
tsylba wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you can't play Minecraft on GNU/Linux anymore? I've bought the things for 10 bucks when it was still an alpha on TIGForum, it's been decade since I played the game but it never required us to be on a proprietary platform then. That'd be a bummer.

I think they just meant that Microsoft owns Minecraft and you need an account with them these days. Java Edition stills runs on GNU/Linux last I checked. >it's been decade since I played the game Unfortunately you may have lost access to your account and thus copy of the game if you didn't do the two mandatory time-limited account migrations.

I think you mean OpenJDK/Linux. There's very little GNU software on most desktop Linux systems.

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

#710

Post by inigyou »

artemonster wrote: post #312
keiferski wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is strange to me that people are re-discovering this today, in 2026. Microsoft has always been half-baked, even in the 80s and 90s. Heck, my parents basically raised me (20+ years ago) by running a business fixing problems with Microsoft products for their clients.

microslop before invention of slop

There was slop before AI. It wasn't called slop yet.
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