I have noticed that games don't store the patches permantly. If I insert a game I've not played in a long time it has to download a patch again even if no patch has come out in 5 years. For example Oblivion had to download patches again even though there has been no new patches in years. So when XBL is shut down a few years from now if anyone wants to play a game we'll all be playing the 1.0 version of that game. Why can't patches be stores as a permanent file like a save game or a DLC rather than just be cached or whatever it is?

Online gaming is great, but it's not great for retro gaming. For example you can't get all the content in Skies of Arcadia on DC, but the GC version where all content shipped on the disc will be a complete experience even 20 years from now as long as you still have a working console and a working disc.

This might seem like no big deal now, but how will retro gaming be a couple of decades from now (when the current generation is retro) when there is no way of experiencing how it was? It won't be possible anymore to just play a 360 game like it is to plug in Chrono Trigger into a SNES and the experience will be the same as it was in 1995.

@dagas said:

You can't get all the content in Skies of Arcadia on DC

Skies of Arcadia had DLC? (I know what I said.)

I bet they will keep Xbox live online for xbox 360 longer then they did for the original xbox. When xbox live shuts down you will not have access to the patches unless they change how you get access to them.

@dagas: Patches sometimes get saved to my memory unit if they are big enough, for example Red Dead Redemption and Rage has saved the update so I can see them under the storage menu in xbox dashboard.

I thought they always saved to the memory unit. Except for some reason GTA IV for me has me patch every day.

@Video_Game_King said:

@dagas said:

You can't get all the content in Skies of Arcadia on DC

Skies of Arcadia had DLC? (I know what I said.)

Yeah, but I bet it was just unlocks for things on the disc since they were only a few kilobytes. Without the DLC you can't finish certain things, like for example "The second download placed a new island in the game, where the last cham in the game was found. Only those who had the downloadable content to get this cham could unlock the final form of Fina's pet, Cupil." taken from the GB page on SoA.

You can find them on the internet and download the into the memory unit from a PC if you have a certain cable, but that's not an option for the 360.

You'll be dead by then, so don't worry.

I live in the clouds man.

I think we are kind of past worrying about backwards compat and shutting off the 360 from live like the old Xbox. Going into the next gen, I think we will be fine.

By the time XBL is shutdown you probably won't care anymore.

Yeh I don't think XBL will be shut down for a long time, there is no need for them to do so. 
And if the ever do, they will first patch the 360 to be aware of it and to make sure it keeps the patches permanently (although I didn't realise they ever did delete on the own anyway) .

Manual title updates. JTAG duders already use this method.

I wonder what will actually die first, XBL, or the last 360. Seriously though, i think you might have a bigger problem finding a working 360 at that point than worrying about patches.

patches save - or at least they used to - to the system cache, which does eventually get cleared from time to time.

They were not planning ahead with the original xbox. Assuming they learn from their mistakes there is no reason 360 cannot be allowed to connect to whatever XBL becomes with the 720 [sic] - if only to a walled garden for patches etc.

@WilltheMagicAsian said:

Manual title updates. JTAG duders already use this method.

This is what I was going to suggest. Microsoft probably won't unlock the 360 for hackers or whatever at any point in time, but chances are that patches and updates will still be available online for you to download and use.

What about when all of the 360's are dead and gone? Well, by that point I'd hope there's a good enough emulator out there. Maybe not, but we'll see.

Meanwhile, retro gaming has shown a profit in these last few years so I don't think that most games will disappear. For that matter, most games this generation are available on PC so this one will never be completely gone. This is one of the advantages of digital distribution - no physical copies to wither away. I don't think you really need to worry about anything this generation withering away.

Jeff's brought the point up a few times during his Jars videos, and I'm pretty sure as well that the next Xbox and Playstation are going to carry everything over that's currently on XBLA/PSN, it's not going to be a leap like it was from the original Xbox to XBLA, when the old servers eventually had to be shut down, so everything should be fine for a pretty long time.

And yeah, judging from how we're seeing retro games go these days, there's a pretty good chance we'll see an "HD remake" (or whatever the next upgrade would be) for games like Oblivion on the next generation of systems. At the very least, the game will be available for very cheap, if not for free on the PC, with all the files readily available, thanks to services like GoG and Steam. So yeah, by the time it happens, I don't think it's going to matter at all.

@Shirogane said:

I wonder what will actually die first, XBL, or the last 360. Seriously though, i think you might have a bigger problem finding a working 360 at that point than worrying about patches.

Probably this. They will stop making 360s and wait until all of them die. In the future, a working 360 will be a hot commodity

The hacking/enthusiast community will have to take it into their own hands once Microsoft shuts down Live for the Xbox 360. Just imagine all the downloadable content that has to be backed up.

Still, they managed to do it with the original Xbox.

It boggles my mind as to how people still prefer DD...

@dagas: Have you cleared your system cache recently? Typically that resets ALL patch information for games you have played on your 360. I don't know that the system automatically clears the patches on it's own. However, I know a system cache reset is recommended for various issues from time-to-time, so that is probably what caused you to re-download old patches.

Other than that, I don't think you have much to worry about as others have said with XBL going away anytime in the near future. Whatever the next console is called will most likely fully support all current XBL features, and will possibly bring some new ones as a carrot on a stick to get people to upgrade to the new hardware.