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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Best News Ever: Halo and Fable coming to Xbox Live Marketplace

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175527

The Fall Xbox 360 dashboard update has been revealed to our colleagues at OXM from Microsoft and it's looking very good indeed with gaming classics and films on demand.

December 4 is the date you'll need to watch out for; that's the day you'll be able to download and play Halo. Yes, Halo as in the Xbox game, through Marketplace, on your Xbox 360.

Microsoft is introducing games it has published for the original Xbox on XBL Marketplace, with the eventual plan to bring as much of the back catalogue across as possible.

Games cost about 1200 Microsoft points (about ten quid), which according to us puts them a little over what you'd pay for them second hand.


The initial list of downloads includes Halo, Fable, Fahrenheit, Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3.



We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

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Why just not buy them second hand? Surely it will be less memory than downloading the full game?



Games i'm currently playing:

too bad there no games available on the xbox that I want and do not own.



Nairu said:
Why just not buy them second hand? Surely it will be less memory than downloading the full game?

And what about the Wii Virtual Console?

I currently have 75 GB available on my 360's hard drive, so much free space that I don't even bother to erase demos like BioShock, Virtua Fighter 5, and Ace Combat 6 after I buy the games.

 

 



We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

Its different with the Virtual console, a lot of NES, SNES, Mega drive etc etc. Games are insanely hard to find these days, i could wander down to my local games store and pick up an old second hand Xbox game, like i could with a GC and PS2 one. Besides i wouldnt download a GC game to my Wii, would just use up valuable memory when i could go out and buy it.



Games i'm currently playing:

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Why download XBOX games that many people own anyway? My bro still owns Halo: Combat Evolved, and Fable, and Burnout 3... I just don't see the point in downloading games that were new two years ago and readily easy to find. It'd make more sense next gen to download games. That'd be like the Wii downloading GC games or the PS3 downloading PS2 games. @_@



Nairu said:
Its different with the Virtual console, a lot of NES, SNES, Mega drive etc etc. Games are insanely hard to find these days, i could wander down to my local games store and pick up an old second hand Xbox game, like i could with a GC and PS2 one. Besides i wouldnt download a GC game to my Wii, would just use up valuable memory when i could go out and buy it.

 Plus with the VC, you don't have to deal with clunky old hardware and cartridges. The price is partially a convenience for not having to own a half-dozen systems just to play Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda: ALttP, Bomberman '93, Sonic, Ys 1 & 2, and Magician Lord. (Not to mention the fact that a Turbo Duo + a Neo Geo alone will set you back the bulk of the price of a Wii...)

Aside from that, one could go pick up an old Xbox game for much less than 1200 MS points (what is that? $15?). And they won't take up a ton of space on your hard drive. This really seems more of a ploy by MS to sell more 120gb HDDs than anything else.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

^^^^ Yeah, used fable at Gamestop is 9.99, or you can pay $15 and take up a couple of gigs of memory on your XBOX 360. Plus, the downloads will take forever, like a couple of hours. I have HSI and it took 1.5-2hrs to download the SVR08 demo (1.2 GB)



Awesome!

That's the greatest news I've heard in awhile about XBLA. This will greatly help Microsoft's revenue from XBLA increase to even greater heights.



It's very simple why they're doing this:

It's very obvious that the Xbox 360 is catering well outside of the old Xbox's userbase. Sales will definately be higher than the Xbox one. This means alot of people will be wanting to be able to purchase old Xbox games. This will allow them to cover those consumers. Where I live, the Xbox is getting increasingly smaller and smaller shelfspace. I cannot just goto the store and randomly buy a copy of Fable or Halo anymore. Not every consumer that wants those old games will do what's needed to buy a older game. VC is the same way: you can always go out and buy a copy of SM64DS if you want: but why not get it from VC?


Overall, this move will be incredibly important. I've been advocating downloadable Xbox games for the past year (read my posts). This is huge. I cannot wait to re-buy Fable, since my copy was lost somewhere. Not only this, with MS offering third party games on the Xbox, this will definately work in their favor for procuring newer games. How many GC and PS2 games to you see on VC and PSN for download? None.

Also, with the huge file sizes of these games, I do believe this will point to them eventually uncapping XBLA download sizes (since I doubt Halo is under 2gb).



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Also, you must remember: if digital distribution wasn't important, or useful, why is Itunes and VG download services like Gametap, Steam or Stardock so popular?



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.