Future-proofing downloadable titles (XBLA/PSN/VC)

[nightrnr]

Has anyone read Sony's newest revision to the user agreement? They are very clear that there is no compensation if the service is shut down. If the site is hacked, they owe you nothing and will not reimburse anything if false charges appear through your account. Your account can be terminated at any time for any reason, they can remove purchased content without any warning,... yadda, yadda...

...they may as well ask us to sacrifice a goat and donate a kidney, for all the BS that's in there...

It just worries me that they are preparing to shut the PS3 service down in the near future and don't want to owe any responsibility to present consumers. Even if it's a long way off, I still don't agree with it. I guess I'll go ahead and accept it, for lack of options, but WTH?

I think that as long as there IS a Playstation/Sony network (PSN/SEN whatever it is now) of some kind (and changing the name of the company doesn't let them off the hook), legitimate buyers should be able to access their paid for product.

--Sighs -- I think I'm done with digital game buying outside of GOG and Humble Bundles.

[Pulsar_t]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... ideo-games

[Original_Name]

Since the topic of emulating recent generation consoles has come up a few times in this thread, could someone explain to me what has held back original Xbox emulation? Is it lack of interest? It's widely circulated that the Xbox was extremely similar in architecture to a PC, which made me think that making a PC-based emulator for it would be (to the extent that such a project can be) relatively easy.

[Hazerd]

Well i dont have a hacked PS3/360, but i do have a hacked Wii and can download and play any game from the Wii Virtual console for free through the use of a WAD Manager.

Id like to get another PS3 to hack and see what i can do for PSN games, i wouldnt bother with full retail blu-ray disc games as they are too large imo, if i can get a game on disc i will.

Im really waiting for them to shutdown PSN on the PS3 and release a final firmware update before i think about hacking a PS3, because then i can download the latest CFW and be done with it.

[Pulsar_t]

Since the topic of emulating recent generation consoles has come up a few times in this thread, could someone explain to me what has held back original Xbox emulation? Is it lack of interest? It's widely circulated that the Xbox was extremely similar in architecture to a PC, which made me think that making a PC-based emulator for it would be (to the extent that such a project can be) relatively easy.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... cd=1&hl=en

Of course if the platform had more coders collaborating it would have probably advanced much more than its current state.

[Original_Name]

Since the topic of emulating recent generation consoles has come up a few times in this thread, could someone explain to me what has held back original Xbox emulation? Is it lack of interest? It's widely circulated that the Xbox was extremely similar in architecture to a PC, which made me think that making a PC-based emulator for it would be (to the extent that such a project can be) relatively easy.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... cd=1&hl=en

Of course if the platform had more coders collaborating it would have probably advanced much more than its current state.

Awesome, all of my questions answered and more! Thank you very much!

[casterofdreams]

I can confirm with my experience on the Xbox 360 that the digital content is tied to both the console and your account.

If you sign onto a foreign Xbox and have a memory stick of a game you can play the game so long as you are connected to the internet via Live and logged in as that gamer tag owner of that content. If not then the game will revert to a demo in most occasions if a demo is available.

If you are on the home Xbox where the content was originally downloaded to (or license transferred, more on that in a bit) you can sign on to Live, not sign on at all, or sign onto your gamer tag and not be online, and you will have full access. I currently no longer want my Xbox 360 to go online anymore. I have it automatically sign onto my gamer tag for saves and gamer score progression but I have full access to content regardless if I am signed on to that gamer tag or not (all offline). So if someone down the line wants to play a game with DLC or a digital game and want to set up their own tag they can do so on the home console.

Licences: The boon to the future issues that'll come up. So this is how it works. Every six months you can transfer your content licences to another (foreign) Xbox. You must sign onto Live with the gamer tag who originally purchased the content and perform the licence transfer on the new system itself. If you transferred the content from and old unit's HDD you must re-download all content transferred to download the updated license which is about 1kb to 4kb in size. After the license transfer is done it becomes the Home Xbox for that content and you have free reign as to the access in any combination noted in the last paragraph. Now here is the problem: if the servers become non-existent you can't sign in to transfer those licenses let alone re-downloading all that content.

I'm hoping as a good will thing that Microsoft and Sony some time down the line would just remove the licensing requirement on all of their legacy consoles. I'm not asking next year but perhaps in 5 to 7 years they would be like "If you got the content, it's yours. Have fun."

[Pulsar_t]

It's definitely a headache, those drm e-licensing issues. Makes you feel like you're handling industrial secrets. Bleh!

Btw, Sony is shutting down servers for Resistance 1/2/3 and GT5 among others. I guess you don't have to wait long to lose all online functionality of your games