[game_preservation] Bad for archival? XBLA delisting rumblings

[Devin Monnens]

Yeah, I was curious about XBLA piracy. I assume someone's tried to crack it
(I think they've already cracked the Virtual Console, but Nintendo locks
accounts), but a quick google didn't discover anything (though I DID learn
the old news that enhanced versions of the Banjo-Kazooie N64 games were
coming to XBLA). My guess is the current best legal way of backing up would
be to purchase copies of all games about to be delisted, but even then,
you're probably not looking at more than a 10 year backup plan due to hard
drive failures (not to mention the expenses involved). The best option is
probably to contact Microsoft or the game publishers themselves in order to
get backups of the software for a black vault archive.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Simon Carless <simon at archive.org> wrote:


> To be clear, this story was actually that delistings will likely NOT

> happen because of the new dashboard update. So that's good.

>

> Also, these games that are playable single player and have online

> elements are a lot more preservable - you can play them when not

> connected, though they are tied to your user ident. Don't know if

> anyone has cracked them but I would presume so. The pirates (for

> better or worse) will take care of much of this preservation.

>

> Much more worrying are the titles that are only playable with a server

> in place, which is why it's good that Henry has been preserving video

> of stuff like EA Online. Those games aren't coming back, through the

> copyright holder's choice, so it's good to get visual records.

>

>

> On 10/13/08, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org> wrote:

> > With these delistings, it's not the worst aspect - the entire service

> > will obviously go caput at some point (10 years? less?) when the Xbox

> > 720 or the Xbox 1080 come out and Microsoft abandon the current platform

> > (MSN Music tried to turn off their activation servers for music, heh. I

> > wonder how long the original Xbox Live will continue to operate too) It

> > makes it mute that specific games will be delisted if the entire service

> > goes, right? :/

> >

> > In any case, it's a similar situation with some other online download

> > services - Gametap and so forth regularly delist games.

> >

> > The only feasible way to collect these are to download all of them

> > constantly (noting the single point of failure, since MS don't allow

> > backups really). For an archive this is kind of unacceptable, unless

> > multiple accounts and whatnot are brought - so no doubt the only other

> > alternative is to contact the developers of the games for a copy (at

> > least which is played on a development kit), or Microsoft themselves for

> > some kind of workaround.

> >

> > It's still only a rumour, I'm sure the "Live update" thing they have

> > coming will be part of it if it is true.

> >

> > Andrew

> >

> > Devin Monnens wrote:

> >> There's the IGN rumor machine chugging away about Microsoft delisting

> >> XBLA games (Microsoft is denying they're going to do it anytime soon).

> >> That would be a serious problem for archival (even if they are crappy

> >> games being removed). I also think this completely defeats the purpose

> >> behind digital distribution. The problem isn't with there being too

> >> much stuff, it's how it's organized.

> >>

> >> http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3170592

> >>

> >> --

> >> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

> >>

> >> "Until next time..."

> >> Captain Commando

> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

> >>

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> >

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-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
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