Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@Zuljaras Aha, well, then it's back to being interesting again...

@Zuljaras After having read through that article, I do ultimately come back to my previous assessment, though.
I can understand it could potentially come in handy, for safekeeping just in case something might happen, but seeing as it still needs an internet download, I'm sure that most people will just skip the step to put a backup on a flash drive, and just update the console directly.

I've never done (or needed to do) any backup on any of my consoles, and both my Xbox 360 and my Xbox One still have hard drives that are in perfect working condition. And I live in one of those countries where the internet is never a problem. Anything could happen, of course, at any time, but so far, I've been either pretty lucky or maybe I just take really good care of my consoles...

@Grumblevolcano Plus Gears isn't as massive a series as Halo. Gears is "popular-ish". Halo was the Fortnite of its generation.

@ThanosReXXX The confusion started with an FAQ page I posted some pages back right from the MS support pages that does say the downloads are mandatory and can not be played without downloading the X1X Enhanced updates first. Yet multiple MS chat support people told Zuljaras that you can play them without the download. Which one is right? We'll see. I'm curious. I'd test myself, but I've been buying digital-only on the X so the patches are all rolled into my download at the outset.

It's possible the FAQ page is outdated and an OS patch changed it since it had been written.

@ThanosReXXX Sony's always offered the OS firmware as a download for USB installation, and XBox seems ahead of Sony in terms of offline functionality for download content, so I'm not surprised you can do a USB install.

As for the utility, if you can't download gigs at home, you can download it somewhere else and just bring it home with you. I had to do that for a good many years

But you're into preserving your physical games and consoles for a long time as well, so that's something you'll definitely keep a copy of yourself I'd think!

@NEStalgia A colleague of mine told me that he would try it when he can with Batman Return to Arkham for the One X. So I will post an update here.

@NEStalgia Well, upon installing them, none of my games have had any pop-up notification that an update was also required, so I'd imagine they'd be perfectly playable, and that is also exactly what it says on Microsoft's official page, so I'd sooner trust the official word, than some anonymous user on an Xbox forum...

As for that firmware update: I already have it installed, so there's really no need for me to keep a copy on a stick.

And I've NEVER downloaded console-related stuff anywhere else than in my own home. My internet is all but flawless. I did have some router issues over the years, but all minor issues, and in the end, I've always been quite happy with what I've got.

Download speeds for me range from 3MB/s in the lows, to 8MB/s in the highs, so downloading a small patch for a console OS is almost like burping for my internet connection...

@ThanosReXXX Well that was my point the official X1X FAQ said it would not run. That's why I was cautioning Zul to start with.

Sure there's reason to keep firmware on a stick if, like you've said in the past, you're into retro consoles and keeping your older games and such. Eventually X1 won't have patches available online. If your X1 breaks and you replace it with another X1 from a retro store etc in the future you may need the patch. Between backing up the OS patch and being able to back up all your downloaded game content (digital, DLC, patches) the X1 is in fact the only modern console you can preserve it's content in backups and still play on any used X1 20 years from now! Kind of a cool feature.

You maybe never needed to, but for years I had to update my PS3 & 4 with downloads from elsewhere. I was furious that option was never available on WiiU. I had to tote it around like a Switch to patch it initially

3-8MB/s or Mb/s? If MB that's utterly amazing! If Mb...that's....actually not all that great.....ouch....and you're encouraging X1X patches? Even my cellular internet was triple that speed.....I was just capped so low I couldn't use it

Edit: I did my maths wrong.....it's probably 3-8MB/s (I hope) meaning ~50Mb/s....which is decent.

@NEStalgia I don't think MCC would've happened if backwards compatibility was planned from the start of the XB1's lifespan. Instead I think Microsoft would've just released Halo 2 Anniversary as a standalone game.

Last gen ports/remasters are most common when there's no backwards compatibility for last gen on current gen consoles.

@NEStalgia Yes, that's download speeds in megabytes, as in: downloading a DVD's worth of content on a BitTorrent client in less than 5 minutes, or 8 on a bad day...

I do have to add something to my previous content, though: probably like you have also experienced, I have by now had copious amounts of additional downloads/patches being executed on the around 76 games that I have now installed on the Xbox One's internal HDD, so I've had to do some swapping out/deleting of downloaded games that I'm never going to play anyway, to accommodate for that.

And I'm not so much encouraging X1X patches, I was just trying to remove the fog of miscommunication by explaining what's actually what, as in mandatory vs non-mandatory on the various models Xbox One.

P.S.

I'll never get a second-hand Xbox. The only console I've ever bought used, although professionally refurbished, was my Dreamcast, simply because I was too late in really appreciating that console, so by the time I truly wanted to own one, I could only get a refurbished one.

As for that no more available patch/download for the Xbox One: you and I both know how that's going to turn out in real life: there will always be some kind of image/copy of that online somewhere, much like how we can now download ROMs and even patches of previous consoles, so I'm not even gonna lose a second of sleep over that infinitesimally small possibility of that ever happening to my Xbox One.

Where it concerns games, is another matter entirely, but right now, I just don't have the extra cash to buy me a decent enough size external hard drive, which for the Xbox One should at least be 3TB by now, and I still have to get an external one to be able to re-download all the games that I've already removed, to make place for patches and other games, so I'll probably be needing two of those, which will set me back at least €200, so that's just not in the cards right now.

@Grumblevolcano Well, MCC would have still needed a remaster treatment one way or another....those games didn't age well. Could they have sold each Halo individually? I wonder.

@Thanosrexxx Ok, yeah ~50Mbs is respectable....unlike the DSL speed I originally read it to be Yeah I ended up with the 2TB + 6TB......I haven't filled it all yet, but I'll probably use my spare 4TB (laptop size) one to back up a chunk of the 6TB....that's a lot of re-downloading should it fail

@NEStalgia Respectable? It's lighting fast, especially considering it isn't even glass fiber...

@NEStalgia The 360 games are fine on XB1 backwards compatibility except Reach so a Gears situation with Halo 2 being the remaster would've been perfectly fine. What we got was partially better (everything in one place) and partially worse (MCC not working brilliantly for 4 years).

@ThanosReXXX True. Around here Comcast has rolled out MOCA 2 pushing gigabit over coax cable.....trouble is they cap you at 1TB/mo, and that's only download. Upload is a paltry 10Mb/s or so!

@grumblevolcano True. I'm still waiting for that X1X update before diving in again!

@NEStalgia Yeah... I've had some of these issues over my old connection, almost a decade ago now.
As for my current one: the weird thing is that although I can download any kind of media at the speeds previously mentioned, I shouldn't be able to, according to various of these online speed tests.

And none of their results match up either, if you compare a couple of different ones, so what my ACTUAL speed is, is anyone's guess. In any case, it's enough to download at the speeds that I do, and to watch Full HD videos online, so in the end, I actually couldn't care less about the specific numbers...

Looks like several of the Arcade Archive NEO GEO titles will be discounts for Deals with Gold for the first time, the likes of Metal Slug 1, KOF 94, Samurai Shodown and more for around $4 each.

Oh, and Battlefront II finally hits the $9 mark if thats your thing at your desired price...

@DarthNocturnal Yeah, they rarely seem to put OG Xbox games in sales, though funny enough Neowave Kind of Fighters is also on offer at $3-ish.

@DarthNocturnal Gamescom is next week.

On another note, Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary is now on backwards compatibility so you can now enjoy both trilogies on XB1 (Legend, Anniversary, Underworld; Tomb Raider 2013, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider). Of course the original batch of games (Tomb Raider 1996, 2, 3, The Last Revelation, Chronicles, Angel of Darkness) have never appeared on Xbox.

I'm having to hold off from my usual way of playing as my One is turning into a barbeque. I was only on Horizon 3 for an hour yesterday, and it still managed to hit a ridiculous temperature. I didn't even need to touch the top of it to feel the heat from it once I'd turned it off. Even the Switch is the same, and my phone whenever I do something more demanding than just looking at the home screen.
I'm curious about what surprises come out of Gamescom, and I'll definitely try to tune into Inside Xbox next week.

I've 100%ed Horizon 3!
Except I haven't, because for whatever reason it's stuck at 99.9% and I have no idea where that last .1% is meant to come from. Unless it's the Forzathon Barn Finds, but that's just silly to have a limited event be tied to overall completion.