Halo Flagship for Xbox Live Games on Demand
Live Marketplace poised to offer massive back-catalogue
If US magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly is to be believed, Microsoft will soon offer Bungie's classic FPS Halo as a pay-to-play download via Xbox Live Marketplace, opening the floodgates to a massive back-catalogue roll-out for adopters of Xbox 360.
Halo is slated to be the first game offered by Microsoft, with other sources stating Ninja Gaiden is expected to follow within weeks. The games are expected to hit the increasingly concise online gaming portal in August of this year, with every first-party and Tecmo title release for Xbox likely to become available before the end of 2006.
No pricing was mentioned by either EGM or those talking to SPOnG over the weekend, though sources close to Microsoft did hint that the revised delivery of Xbox back-catalogue would herald the roll-out of larger 360 hard drives. Don't be at all surprised of you see HDs hitting retail that come with pre-paid Xbox game bundles in stores this summer.
As to how Microsoft will balance it's new initiative with emerging piracy issues remains to be seen. Read a full report of an alleged hack of the 360 here.
Halo is slated to be the first game offered by Microsoft, with other sources stating Ninja Gaiden is expected to follow within weeks. The games are expected to hit the increasingly concise online gaming portal in August of this year, with every first-party and Tecmo title release for Xbox likely to become available before the end of 2006.
No pricing was mentioned by either EGM or those talking to SPOnG over the weekend, though sources close to Microsoft did hint that the revised delivery of Xbox back-catalogue would herald the roll-out of larger 360 hard drives. Don't be at all surprised of you see HDs hitting retail that come with pre-paid Xbox game bundles in stores this summer.
As to how Microsoft will balance it's new initiative with emerging piracy issues remains to be seen. Read a full report of an alleged hack of the 360 here.
Games:
Halo: Combat Evolved
Read More Like This
Comments
Spartian116 20 Mar 2006 13:51
1/13
wow I did not expect that to happen so soon. Microsoft is just eating up the market, at least here in canada. everyone has a 360 or is getting one. I was going to wait for the ps3 and revo but almost everyone i work with got 360, so I did as well. even the EB's and Bestbuys are bashing ps3 and pushing the 360's all the way. I was a sega fan and miss the DC but the xbox filled its gap, I just hope that the ps3 or revo have a fighting chance in the 360 ruled market when they release becouse if they fail microsoft will get lazy and we wont get the quality of games on the next generation that we had on the last.
acidviper 20 Mar 2006 14:47
2/13
Spartian116 wrote:
everyone has a 360 or is getting one.
WTF are you talking about. The GC outsold the 360 over the holidays and no Japanese companies are supporting it very well.
Halo is already the best selling game, why the hell would you need to buy another copy to put on a HD?
more comments below our sponsor's message
OptimusP 20 Mar 2006 18:54
3/13
Yeah...stores bashing one console sure justifies buying the other one... that's why the DS is such a failure!! Getting bashed by stores everywhere!!
really...spartan... are you one of those hired botguys?
Anyways... Nintendo should never had announced their super backward compatibility for the revo... look what it is making MS and Sony do...
really...spartan... are you one of those hired botguys?
Anyways... Nintendo should never had announced their super backward compatibility for the revo... look what it is making MS and Sony do...
tyrion 21 Mar 2006 08:36
4/13
OptimusP wrote:
Anyways... Nintendo should never had announced their super backward compatibility for the revo... look what it is making MS and Sony do...
You could say the same thing about Sony's insistence on backwards compatibility in the PS2. Nintendo may have more titles and generations to support, but Sony did do it first.
OptimusP 21 Mar 2006 17:23
5/13
Game Boy Color was the first backward compatible piece of game hardware.
But it doesn't matter who did it first, it's nice seeing MS and Sony willing to lose huge loads of money by hosting games that big. Sony needs 500 mb to host the average PSOne games... Nintendo needs 500 mb to host all their NES games...whoopty!!
But it doesn't matter who did it first, it's nice seeing MS and Sony willing to lose huge loads of money by hosting games that big. Sony needs 500 mb to host the average PSOne games... Nintendo needs 500 mb to host all their NES games...whoopty!!
tyrion 22 Mar 2006 10:00
6/13
OptimusP wrote:
Game Boy Color was the first backward compatible piece of game hardware.
If you want to be picky, the Commodore 128 was backwards compatible to the Commodore 64 and was released 13 years before the GBC. I know Commodore pushed the 128 as a serious business machine (like they tried to with the 64) but the fact is, everybody used them for games.
The point I was making is that until the PS2, no "under the TV" console had been backwards compatible. That's much more relevant to the discussion about the XBox 360, PS3 and Revolution having backwards compatibility to previous generations of "under the TV" consoles than the GBC is. In that area, Sony were the first to deliver.
kid_77 22 Mar 2006 13:11
7/13
tyrion wrote:
If you want to be picky, the Commodore 128 was backwards compatible to the Commodore 64 and was released 13 years before the GBC. I know Commodore pushed the 128 as a serious business machine (like they tried to with the 64) but the fact is, everybody used them for games.
Ahem. Spectrum 16/48k ;)
tyrion wrote:
The point I was making is that until the PS2, no "under the TV" console had been backwards compatible. That's much more relevant to the discussion about the XBox 360, PS3 and Revolution having backwards compatibility to previous generations of "under the TV" consoles than the GBC is. In that area, Sony were the first to deliver.
Well, you could get the Power Base Converter to play Master System games on the Megadrive. But the PS2 is the first to offer it "out of the box"... at least that I can think of.
tyrion 22 Mar 2006 14:59
8/13
kid_77 wrote:
Ahem. Spectrum 16/48k ;)
Ahem. Same computer - different memory capacity.
The C128 was a completely different machine to the C64.
Ahem. Same computer - different memory capacity.
The C128 was a completely different machine to the C64.
kid_77 22 Mar 2006 15:19
9/13
tyrion wrote:
Ahem. Same computer - different memory capacity.
The C128 was a completely different machine to the C64.
Curse you!
I was going to trump it with Atari 7800 - Atari 2600... but it came out in 1986 *humph*
DoctorDee 22 Mar 2006 16:15
10/13
OptimusP wrote:
It's nice seeing MS and Sony willing to lose huge loads of money by hosting games that big. Sony needs 500 mb to host the average PSOne games...
3000 (approx number of PS1 games) x 500Mb is 1.5 terrabytes. I have more disk space in my Mac at home... Hardly an investment likely to frighten MicroSony.
OptimusP 22 Mar 2006 19:40
11/13
Sure, if you put it on only 1 server it's not bad...
but what if 500 000 people started downloading from that one server that one game that's 2 gigs in size...that isn't cut it anymore i geuss...
but what if 500 000 people started downloading from that one server that one game that's 2 gigs in size...that isn't cut it anymore i geuss...
DoctorDee 22 Mar 2006 21:19
12/13
OptimusP wrote:
Sure, if you put it on only 1 server it's not bad...
but what if 500 000 people started downloading from that one server that one game that's 2 gigs in size...that isn't cut it anymore i geuss...
but what if 500 000 people started downloading from that one server that one game that's 2 gigs in size...that isn't cut it anymore i geuss...
My point is, if one dude in Dewsbury can afford to have 1.5 tera in his home computer that he uses for browsing the net, posting to the SPOnG forums and playing iTunes, then Sony/Microsoft (who are hundreds of thousands of times richer than me) can easily afford to have several data centres, each with thousands of computers with that much storage.
You were making out that what was gonna crush them financially was disk space - but disk space is DIRT CHEAP. We buy one tera RAID 0 drives for £500 a time. Hosting 500Mb files is only marginally more expensive than hosting 50Kb files.
And let's face it, they are not talking about giving these things away... they're gonna charge - and the cost of hosting/bandwidth will have been factored in, and it'll be much cheaper than packaging, transportation, distributor and retailer costs...
OptimusP 22 Mar 2006 22:23
13/13
Well I did have the entire context of half a million people downloading the file in the back of my head when i typed it down but that's no excuse, probably should have added "and the lot" or some other 3-5 words saying that implies that do i mean the whole lot of stuff when hosting a file for a service meant for millions of people.
Then it comes down how much are they going to charge and how much it's going to cost to provide a 500 mb game and the lot... if Nintendo charges 5 euros for a N64 game, can Sony do the same thing and make a profit?
Then it comes down how much are they going to charge and how much it's going to cost to provide a 500 mb game and the lot... if Nintendo charges 5 euros for a N64 game, can Sony do the same thing and make a profit?