Kind of sad that we will never get to play great "onlinegames" such as Halo 2 again, I realize that Microsoft wants to move forward but I still feel a bit sad that they're pulling the plug on old Live.. I haven't played any old Xbox game on Live on my 360 for a really long time, but I know alot of people still playing Halo2 for the 360, will be wierd not seeing any more of that.

@Joakim,

That is the biggest reason that people have been disappointed with Companies like Blizzard and IW. They are removing the ability for people to continue playing their games years after the company stops supporting them. Once Blizzard shuts down Battle.Net no one will be able to play SC2 or Diablo 3. Once IW shuts down their servers no one will be able to play MW2.

That is one of the problem I have with the games industry. Many of the largest companies lack long term vision. They are obsessing over short term gain while ignoring the fact that their games will become obsolete in 10 years, not because of hardware changes, but because of their own business decisions.

People will still be playing Diablo 2 long after Blizzard shuts down support for Diablo 3. People will still be playing Starcraft long after Blizzard shuts down support for Starcraft 2. Why is that? Not because the previous iterations are superior in gameplay and graphics. No because they are superior in Online gameplay. They support the ability for people to connect their computers directly to play multiplayer.

If these games that Microsoft are shutting down still have good local multiplayer, there may still be hope that people will continue to play them. If not, they will be left to become abandoned by the people that made them a success.

Well, as long as the changes they make to live clean-up the experience I don't care about discontinuing old games. But I doubt they will clean it up.

100 friends limitation going away? :)

Can you really have that many friends as a gaming nerd? :-P

@Roberto,

People on Facebook have hundreds of friends. I see no reason why it would not be possible in XBox Live. People will play in random matches with someone and like the experience and want to play again with them at a later time and they become "friends" Not all friends have the same games so they will make friends around specific games thus adding more. Then there are their real life friends, people they meet on websites etc.

Who does this sort of action help? Hm. Constant cost of server maintenance and up-time...no more money coming in since people don't buy the old games anymore... Although it is frustrating for old game owners and lovers, it's a great strategy by the software producers to encourage new purchases. That's how PC hardware stays alive (DirectX 10, anyone?).

That's just a damn shame. People will be playing Halo 1 for the PC for a long time after they can't play it on XBox. I can understand if console games eventually have no multiplayer component, but when they do this to PC games, there's an issue. There's something wrong with the idea that I can play Quake 2 online but not MW2 or Red Faction:Guerrilla in a decade or so.

Javier Arevalo: "100 friends limitation going away? :) "

Most likely and I'm quite thankful for that! This could also mean further functionality like Clan lists and per-Game friends lists...the sky is the limit here with these shackles removed.

Must have been a difficult decision for MS but it's one that I support.

@Ephram: How does maintaining old game online server hardware involve vision? I do believe that not being able to maintain online services for old multiplayer online games is an issue that for the sake of game preservation needs to be addressed. But I think it's fair that online services can't continue forever.

A good example of this is Tabula Rasa, a game that had sold horribly. Was it financially worth it for NCsoft to continue running the Tabula Rasa servers when barely anyone was playing it? Despite there still being a large amount of people playing Halo 2 multiplayer (among other games), where's the financial incentive for Microsoft to maintain a service for which nobody buys any games anymore?

@Josh,

I am not saying that they should support the multiplayer servers indefinitely. What I am saying is that locking the consumer into multiplayer through proprietary servers is not conducive to the long term survival of these games.

I used the examples of Starcraft and Diablo 2 as examples of this. Both those games allow the players to play via LAN thus owners of the games can continue playing the full game.

But when you force the players into a system that can only be used on proprietary servers, when your service dies, the game dies with it. Especially when the single player aspects of many games are as weak as they are.

So the problem is not in keeping the servers up for all of time, the problem is designing the game without the foresight that some day your servers won't be around.

To be honest, I don't know how one could work around this issue for MMOs. But for a game that has all content on the disk, there should be no reason that a full side of the game should ever be obsolete.

@Ephriam: Ah I misunderstood what you were saying earlier then. I think proprietary online services seems to be the way things are going. Maybe some day in the future some wealthy people will create a foundation that is given permission to run old proprietary online services for people to play their old multiplayer games that run on them. :)

That means no more "Pro Fishing Challenge". It is a sad day indeed.

I read that there are services for original Xbox for online play without going through live.

In older days, there used to be IPX emulators over internet, or Hamachi for LAN emulation. So with a little effort this should be entirely possible.

@sukru: yes, emulated live servers and hacks to get your hacked xbox hooked up to them will undoubtedly be available. The problem with it is that, unless MS radically changes its licensing scheme, these services will be illegal to run and illegal to use.

In my opinion, the best thing for the games would be for MS to offer to legally license 3rd party replacement servers and distribute a patch that allows users to connect to them by specifying an IP address. However, I suspect Microsoft will be more interested in pushing players to newer games and hardware than doing what is best for old products.

@Ephriam Knight
"Once they shut down Battle.net..." There are already hundreds of battle.net unofficial server around, they can shut it down right now, nobody would really care. Let be assured that bnetd will support Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 no mather how hard they try and sue. So Valve shut down WON, first thing you know WON2 is born.

Anyway someone who really want to play game on their old xbox should use XLink Kay (which has been in operation since 2003 btw) or something of the like, here problem solved who the hell still used XBLive on those anyway...

This is kind of sad. Good call John Petersen on no more Pro Fishing Challenge. At least they are upping the number of friends you can have. It only makes sense. www.montanaangler.com