Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday April 30 2019, @08:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the It-plays-for-sure-dept dept.

Microsoft is gearing up to release the next version of the XBox with the key feature of the latest release is that the new XBox won't have a disc drive. While this may reduce the cost of each unit for Microsoft some buyers may regret the absence of the disc player given that many homes no longer have a standalone disc player relying on the games console for playing DVDs.

Perhaps this is a gift from Microsoft to Netflix introducing a new raft of customers looking for online content delivery.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:08AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @02:08AM (#837024)

    Your generation will pass. Soon all the kids will know is that in order to buy a game it must be purchased online.

    Kids today don't know how good they've got it.

    In my day, you were lucky if you could by episode 1 of a game on floppy disk in a zip-lock bag. If you liked it, you mailed a cheque off someplace for the next episodes -- more levels -- and waited a couple of weeks or so for a few more disks to be sent by post. (I still have many of them!)

    In my day you got new free software by buying magazines and typing in code listed in them.

    In my day, it was a big deal if a game included pictures -- not video, just still images -- to supplement the text of the game proper.

    In my day, games had no graphics. Even animated games used text for things like flying spaceships you had to shoot at.

    In my day, games weren't download-only; games weren't delivered on Blu-ray, DVD or CD; games weren't even delivered on floppy disk; no, games were stored on audio cassettes. Disks and discs came later.

    Kids today and their online-only games, I tell ya...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @08:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @08:57AM (#837145)

    In my day we didn't even have games. All we had was a wrench, and we used it to play dodgeball. And we liked it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @09:13AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01 2019, @09:13AM (#837148)

    I can still run these old games from cassettes using emulation or even, if I have, an original hardware. I can record them into modern machine and recognize them into working files. Some time ago I was involved in project in which we had a few kilometers of non-standard 9-channel punched tape to read into a PC. Readers were gone since late 1970s. I did this by modifying an old roller scanner and it worked perfectly. We got lots of archive scientific data and FORTRAN program to process them. The FORTRAN program, after modifying 18-20 lines related to I/O, got compiled on modern Fortran - after 40 years.
    Show me a "digital distribution" game which allows to do it on a decade-old rig, not a ZX81. Every few years it's "sorry, our servers are out, screw you, buy another one".

    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday May 01 2019, @01:41PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday May 01 2019, @01:41PM (#837242) Journal

      Show me a "digital distribution" game which allows to do it on a decade-old rig

      Nova the Squirrel [novasquirrel.itch.io] and Lizard [rainwarrior.itch.io] will run on any rig with the appropriate virtual machine installed. Got a ThinkPad from 2009? No problem!