I am not sure but I thought they said, when Microsoft launched their downloable game platform that those purchases would be compatible with next gen Xboxes.

Does anyone remember if and/or when they said that ?

Right now (mid 2013) some people are angry that backwards compatibility is not in the picture for XBOX ONE but back when digital games started becoming available (and more and more popular) on consoles, I am pretty sure that gamers were worried about their purchases being stuck on a specific platform and being lost when newer consoles replaced the Xbox 360 and PS3.

I'd like to know what you might remember from that time, or better yet, finding an article where they actually said something about it, before they chose to go with a system architecture that made backwards compatibily impossible (or simply harder).

Personnaly, I used to have reservations about buying digital games and I'm pretty sure I read something that made me think that those purchases were not going to be regrettable in the long run. Of course now, it's obvious that bought gaming content on Xbox 360 will stay on that platform and not having a working console for that platform means that your purchases will be stuck in "limbo".

Would you have spent as much money on digital games if that fact was clear from the beginning ?

I bought DLC for knights of the old republic for the original xbox which has been inaccessible since the removal of legacy xbox live.

It's irritating to lose access to something you've purchased but i'm not losing sleep over it.

NO backwards compatibility in any form

@charleytonyhttp://kotaku.com/xbox-exec-if-you-re-backwards-compatible-you-re-real-509340172 read that

If they don't carry over, that'll be a real bummer, but I can see the reasoning for why they wouldn't. That reasoning being that since regular games aren't going to be compatible, why should we expect the digital ones to be any different? Also, aren't some of the games on XBLM just older retail titles? In those cases, that would be another complication. Why would the downloaded copy of Red Dead Redemption (or Borderlands 2 or whatever) work if the boxed version didn't?

Again, I'm not saying that I want these things to be incompatible, but I'm not expecting them to carry over. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, though.

Aren't xbl download games tied to the account? And you will be able to carry over your account from the 360 to Xbox One so those games won't be lost just because your 360 is in storage. Backwards compatibility is kind of a dumb thing, you don't buy spend all that money on a new console to do something that you can already do with the console that you have already paid for.

Retro gaming will stop being a thing in the future. The gaming industry only brings joy to my heart!

There was a time when playing video games meant going to the Arcade. More often than not, you would end up spending $5, $10 or maybe even $20 bucks on a game. It was fun while it lasted, but when it was over, you'd walk away with nothing to show for it.

Fast forward, say, 15 years. Add "Xbox Live" before "Arcade". Bask in the irony.