So really quick questions before I make THE purchase

[onysi]

I am finally in the process of purchasing an xbox and I wanted certain things clarified.

1. If I purchase games digitally, are they on my account for good like Steam? I mean, can I still download these games if lets say, I do not have Xbox Live Gold for a year. I know Gold is required for online gaming, but I hope that's not the case for downloading games under your account.

2. Is there a digital copy or somehow save the game into my Xbox account, so when the disc gets scratched, stolen, etc, then can I always access the game via download? or is this one of the things they got rid of last year due to other gamer's love for physical media. Personally hate buying discs now.

3. Will these downloaded games carry on to next gen (Xbox Two, etc.) under our account?

4. external harddrives work for downloading games without any hassle right?

5. Does it have cloud storage for game saves in case I need to access it on another xbox or in the future, and how much? xbox 360 only had 512mb or something.

So I pretty much am hoping xbox one has a similar ecosystem as Steam where you can access your games anytime, anywhere, plus more.

 

[MAkhdar]

1. Yes they are in your account for good.
2. No there isn't a digital copy you get, but I believe if the game is installed on the Xbox it only uses the disc to verify it.
3. There are no details on the next gen but you can probably bet that it will work fine due to the completely rewritten Xbox architecture.
4. Yes work perfectly.
5. Here is some information on the way game saves work - > Manage Game Saves in Cloud | Games On Xbox One

 

[awilliams1701]

1) yes
2) no (this was the plan, but was scrapped because it would have killed used games)
3) maybe, maybe not. Will XB2/4/whatever have x86 processor included? Will it actually use a newer x86 processor? We don't know.

I don't know about 4 or 5. I know the PS4 does #5. I believe #4 is yes. They would be crazy to not have #5 since the PS4 does it.
I don't have one, but I know a bit about them.

I am finally in the process of purchasing an xbox and I wanted certain things clarified.

1. If I purchase games digitally, are they on my account for good like Steam? I mean, can I still download these games if lets say, I do not have Xbox Live Gold for a year. I know Gold is required for online gaming, but I hope that's not the case for downloading games under your account.

2. Is there a digital copy or somehow save the game into my Xbox account, so when the disc gets scratched, stolen, etc, then can I always access the game via download? or is this one of the things they got rid of last year due to other gamer's love for physical media. Personally hate buying discs now.

3. Will these downloaded games carry on to next gen (Xbox Two, etc.) under our account?

4. external harddrives work for downloading games without any hassle right?

5. Does it have cloud storage for game saves in case I need to access it on another xbox or in the future, and how much? xbox 360 only had 512mb or something.

So I pretty much am hoping xbox one has a similar ecosystem as Steam where you can access your games anytime, anywhere, plus more.

 

[onysi]

1. Yes they are in your account for good.
2. No there isn't a digital copy you get, but I believe if the game is installed on the Xbox it only uses the disc to verify it.

hey thanks for the infos. I am really BUMMED about owning them digital vs physical. There are great games ID like to keep for good, and physical media just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I've PC games I had to rebuy as digital because the discs just didn't work anymore. I repurchased most of my physical PC games on Steam.

And I had to ask about #3 because I'm bummed tto sell my 360, but I also purchased a bunch of digital games on 360, so next gen XBOX (10 years from now) need to be able to access these older games. Xbox One will never be able to access 360 games, so I had to say goodbye to games like Red Dead Redemption.
Will Microsoft ever make them compatible and downloadable on XO, or is this just too much resources for them?

 

[awilliams1701]

If you don't like physical then don't buy hard copies. I'm 100% digital on my PS4. The only advantage of the disc is that it might take a lot longer to download than to install from the disc.

As I understand it, there is no possible way that the current XBones will support 360 games. Simply put the hardware of the 360 isn't included and the XBone is incompatible. The x86 chip inside is just not powerful enough to emulate a 360 in realtime (and sadly its not all that powerfull in the first place my 2011 PC is still more powerful than both systems). With that said there are a couple of options that MS could choose to do (but probably won't)
1) Release a USB accessory that includes the needed hardware for 360 emulation. (less than 1% chance of this happening)
2) Release a newer XBone that includes the needed hardware (considering that both MS and Sony did the opposite with last gen consoles again 1% chance)
3) Stream it over the internet. This is not ideal because of latency. (Sony has this option in place, no word on MS)
4) The people that made the games you love re-release them on the new console. (This happens all the time and is up to the developer not MS)

hey thanks for the infos. I am really BUMMED about owning them digital vs physical. There are great games ID like to keep for good, and physical media just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I've PC games I had to rebuy as digital because the discs just didn't work anymore. I repurchased most of my physical PC games on Steam.

And I had to ask about #3 because I'm bummed tto sell my 360, but I also purchased a bunch of digital games on 360, so next gen XBOX (10 years from now) need to be able to access these older games. Xbox One will never be able to access 360 games, so I had to say goodbye to games like Red Dead Redemption.
Will Microsoft ever make them compatible and downloadable on XO, or is this just too much resources for them?

 

[onysi]

Ill take #3. OnLive is doing it. Internet speed is increasing, but #4 is more likely to happen than making compatible console. 360 is still selling, and is selling big. I honestly cannot have way too many techs in my room, that's why I also chose digital over physical. Im fine deleting games to free up space and redownloading them when I need them.

 

[Coreldan]

The external hard drive must be USB3 and be at least 256GB, but if you meet those requirements, it works just fine and is said to even load faster than the internal HDD in many cases.

Your games are automatically saved to the cloud, given internet access. To my knowledge there's no real cap for those saves, at least such isnt really advertised anywhere, although I guess there could be a chance that one day it just says that you exceeded the allowed cloud save storage? But doubt it.

Why would you get any game as physical in your scenario? You seem to want digital games only, but you talk about physical games too? Just get everything digital. Everything is available digitally except those few games that require other phyiscal stuff, mostly games like Disney Infinity Skylanders, but base rule is that everything is available digitally on the day of release. And nowadays quite often for predownloading too, so if you prepurchase a digital game, you can have it downloaded before the game releases, so when it does release you wont waste time waiting for it to download.

 

[ncxcstud]

The pre-purchase/loading of digital games is great. Halo: TMCC came out last night at midnight. There is a 15gb patch to install (making the total size of the game 59GB). I didn't have to worry about that. Once, midnight hit I was ready to play. If I got it from a store I'd have to wait another 25+ minutes to download and install the game..