How long does anyone think the Xbox 360 is going to be supported until it suffers the same fate as its precursor and the the people on this site are left to pick up the pieces?
Probably quite a few years yet, a big thing at the moment is releasing Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. Some of these games are event getting 4K enhancements. Xbox Live on the Xbox Classic was killed off as they were stuck with many hard coded limits in games, such as 100 friends on the friends list. The Xbox 360 is a lot more upgradable in that regard and isn't holding Xbox Live back on the Xbox One. A lot of people still use the 360 as a media streaming device (Netflix and so on). So with the above in mind i don't foresee Xbox Live closing down on the Xbox 360 any time soon.
Is preserving 360 content harder than the original Xbox? With a lot more DLC in games and an over-reliance on patches, it is something worth being concerned about. At least original Xbox games without patches or DLC are fundamentally playable and complete. The same can't be said of AAA games as they become more recent. Speaking of which, how will games of today be preserved when their services are discontinued? Will you guys have to find a way to trick the games that you're completing a micro-transaction? Unlimited credits will break these games in the opposite way than when they were introduced; instead of pay-to-win, you'll be able to obtain everything outright, killing any fun of doing anything.
Its easier to preserve 360 content as you can copy it on to a USB memory stick and extract it on a PC with ease. You can then use YarisSwap to patch the content to work on any Jtag or RGH hacked Xbox 360. Unless it requires a connection to Xbox Live to work, anything for the Xbox 360 can be preserved with ease. For arcade games you can even download the free trial off Xbox Live and you have everything you need to preserve the full game, simply run it though YarisSwap. DLC you need to buy it, again that can be unlocked to work on any console with YarisSwap. Game Title Updates can be downloaded by anyone who owns that game. That vast majority of Xbox 360 content is out there on Warez sites in one way or another, so theirs no reason you can't download as much of it as possible now and keep adding to your archives as and when you find it. I have all the DLC and patches for games im interested, However if i was to come across a big archive of stuff it might now be something I was interested in downloading and keeping safe for the future. As what I have is a small fraction of what is out there.
In the present, is it better to have a modded Xbox 360 or not? When it comes to the OG Xbox, there is literally no reason to not have it modded; even if you didn't want DLC, you'd still need to remove the capacitor that ruins the motherboard. Also, wouldn't it get you banned on XBL?
If you want a proper modded 360 (Jtag or RGH) then you can't have Xbox Live on that console. They were some dual boot solutions however i found it best just to have a legit 360 and a modded 360. If all you want to do is play burned games you can get on Xbox Live with a flashed DVD drive.
I hear a new competitor for Steam is propping up. Their gimmick is the ability to sell digital games you own. Wouldn't it be grand if other digital retailers caught on and did this too? De-listed games wouldn't be as problematic anymore, and if this practice was extended to DLC, exclusive content wouldn't be as problematic either. One can hope.
Can pre-order DLC that isn't available to be purchased be archived on this site? I'm not sure if they're "paid content", as their problem is that you can't buy them.
It's a different hack to achieve the same end result, unsigned code running on the Xbox 360. The Jtag hack came first in 2009 and was compatible with Xbox 360 consoles which hadn't updated past the 7371 dashboard. A few years later the RGH hack (and various variations of it) we're released which are compatible with most Xbox 360's regardless of the dashboard version i believe (not followed the scene too close over the last couple of years, however i believe that is still true).
Is it better to get a modded Xbox 360/PS3 now, or wait until the services are shut down for these consoles soon, when the manufacturers don't care at all what you do? I hear they are ever vigilant with modded consoles.
Get one now and don't go online with it, in the future they will become more scarce. Although i believe an exploit has just been released which allows you to install CFW on much newer PS3's which have been updated.
I'd like to know how one can contribute DLC. I don't really have anything rare on Xbox 360, save de-listed games like Transformers and Alan Wake, but perhaps with newer newer consoles I can be of assistance. I'm assuming you need a modded console first?
I have another inquiry. Say that there's this game released on XB 360. It gets 2 DLC packs. It all gets de-listed, with no trace in Xbox marketplace nor the Xbox store. If this game had a title update, would it still be available when I play with the disc?
You don't actually need a modded 360 to inject / extract content, you can connect a usb memory stick to the Xbox 360 and format it for use with the 360. How to configure a USB memory stick to be used as Xbox 360 storage Once you have done that and copied some content to the usb memory stick you can use tools such as Party Buffalo Drive Explorer to extract the content on a PC, no modded 360 required. You can always download title updates for games, regardless of if the game / dlc has been delisted. If you purchased some DLC in the past that is no longer on Xbox Live, you can still re-download it from your account's download history on the 360 dashboard.
If that is so, then why are title updates listed on this site? Is it done preemptively before discontinuation of the services?
It was more for people who couldn't get on Xbox Live. The 360 made its way unofficially to many countries we're people might not have easy access to the internet at home, or even if they did couldn't get on Xbox Live. Plus another benefit is the updates are preserved.