bduckman

February 06, 2010 at 7:27pm

They've done the math and it's easy math to do, too. Start with, how many people still access LIVE with the original XBox? Of those people, how many do so exclusively? After all, if you already have a 360, you're not likely to drop LIVE because your XBox is no longer compatiable. So, how many people use the XBox Uno exclusively? And... of those... how many are likely to drop their accounts completely, forever, never again joining the LIVE community?

We're talking a subset of a subset. A minority of a minority. It's like asking how many left handed Americans are over 6' tall? 10% of Americans are thought to be left handed. Population is 300 million, so 30 million lefties. Less than 4% of Americans are over 6 feet tall, so 1.2 million are both left handed and over 6 feet tall. Applying this numbers to Microsoft's numbers, if <10% use only the Xbox to access LIVE and <4% of those will never rejoin; of their 23 million members, they lose 920,000, or, 4% of them. Anyone want to guess how many of them have an Xbox Gold account?

Look! A distraction!

I Jedi

February 05, 2010 at 5:20pm

I find it amazing that people are still using the regular Xbox, and in enough numbers to make Microsoft want to drop them. Personally, I feel that a majority of people with a regular Xbox still may be too poor to afford to upgrade to the 360. I could be wrong, but why wouldn't people want to get the Xbox 360 over the Xbox, if they could? Maybe because they only ever play one specific multi-player game? If so, that game probably has long been loosing participants in its Xbox Live multi-player arenas, as it is probably an older game, like Halo 2 or Gears of War 1.

I also think that the time-frame given to the original Xbox owners is a bit too fast... Microsoft may have given a 2 and a half month notice, but I think they should have given a notice of at least 6 months, so that they could save up, rather than be rushed to get a new one in the short time frame they now have. Either way, I think it is a stupid decision to force them to switch, unless it was costing Microsoft money to keep them online; however, if the reason they are doing this is to get them to buy online content then I frown upon Microsoft's decision. They are just a company, I guess.

Caboose

February 05, 2010 at 3:30pm

 This isn't surprising at all. Eventually the user base becomes too small, and/or the cost of maintence is too high to continue support it so it gets shut down. Heck, if everything was supported forever, there'd still be Windows 3.1 updates being rolled out regularily, VHS movies would still be in production and the very first cell phones would still be in full use today.

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

tweeve

February 05, 2010 at 3:06pm

microsoft dropping support for old xbox game, I cant say i didnt see it coming. I still have my old xbox still play a few games, wish I could play more xbox games on my 360. About 2/3rds of my games wont run on the 360. They havent updated the compatibility list in over 2 years, I was hoping at least one day I would be able to run most my games on the 360. Guess I will have to keep the old beast around a bit longer so I can still play the classic xbox games.

habuza

February 05, 2010 at 2:21pm

PC's definately take the gaming cake still. My PC blows away the 360 and PS3 , and I can play my older games too, and I don't need to upgrade or downgrade or any of that floppy horse ****. Anyway, it's still a shame to see them dump their regular xbox users like that.

HeartBurnKid

February 05, 2010 at 1:51pm

As long as there's even one person out there still willing to run a server, I can play 10 year old games to my heart's content without depending on the publisher, MS, or anybody else.

Advantage: PC.

RtDK

February 05, 2010 at 1:36pm

Cue the haters of Microsoft and the fear-mongers who oppose change--probably people who still use XP too.

Come on folks. The basic 360 clocks in at two-hundred bucks, and plays most (if not all) of your old Xbox games. It's a media center, connects to your PC, has several add-ons to improve functionality, and is overall just plain better.

And before people cite the RROD, that's practically a non-issue these days. And if you want Xbox Live, it's looking like you won't have much of a choice come April. I don't see this being a big problem though. The original Xbox, I don't hear much about, except when it comes to mods, so I doubt it's another case of WinXP.