GameStop Takes Jab At Xbox 360 Store Closure, Backfires Immediately

Physical Discs are NO more preserving Games than Digital. Those 360 games that were available to buy on Disc went out of print years ago - far longer than the Digital versions were still available to buy. If you bought on Disc or Digitally at the time - both are still accessible.

The ONLY advantage that Physical holds is the fact that you can 'sell' them on to another person. If you can't find a 'new' copy of the game, you maybe able to hunt down a 'used' copy somewhere but you couldn't buy many of the 360 games brand new on Disc unless they were 'overstocked' and didn't sell well - but you can buy a lot today 'new' Digitally in the BC Store.

Take Gears of War, the 1st game. You'd be hard pressed to find a brand new copy of the 360 version today on Disc - not that you'd probably try with the Digital BC version or XB1 remastered version - same with games like Halo 3 or Fable 2 because they stopped making these on Disc years ago - they were 'discontinued' from manufacturing and unless some Stores still have 'old' stock, you can't buy it 'Physically' anymore - unless 'used' which doesn't count to Publishers/Devs/Platform holders etc as they get 'nothing'...

I'm not Anti Physical or Anti Digital, but Physical doesn't 'preserve' games any more than Digital does. Without a '360' a LOT of the games are useless anyway so if your 360 breaks and you can't find a 'decent' used replacement, the Disc is useless. It's not preserved your ability to play it anymore than buying Digital would.

King Beast
@Daddy_Xerath
We can still buy the Xbox 360 games digitally lol, just not on the Xbox 360 console anymore. Still have access to them all too. Nice try tho

Well that's just 100% false. You can only buy backwards compatible 360 games. Marketplace.xbox.com, the online Xbox 360 store was retired as well.

Today physical games are "boot disks" that do not contain the full game or have a beta version that is often not playable.

Indeed, I fear that the physical format today does not serve to preserve video games.

The preservation of video games is in the hands of companies and their will to maintain backward compatibility. Fortunately in this aspect Xbox is doing much better than Sony or Nintendo, although not perfect, there are many OG Xbox and X360 games that have been lost forever.

Physical media is the only way to go. Superior experience. Much, much, much rather watch movies on disc than streaming. Overall quality leaps and bounds better.

@BAMozzy Edit: this comment isn't actually directed at you. At first I was going to reply to your comment then I decided to just leave a comment of my own. So just ignore it lol.

There is 2,155 Xbox 360 games and only 632 of those are backwards compatible but apparently Xbox is all about preservation.

When the Xbox Live connectivity for Xbox 360 is eventually shut off, those discs aren't going to magically patch themselves into games that are in a state that you'll want to play.

Who care what Toystop thinks. The selection of games has drastically decreased over the years and its challenging to even find current generation games at Gamestop.

Xbox360 market place has been gutted for a few years, a lot of IP licensed games started getting delisted around 2019 and later. I know bc I have many accounts going back to 2010. The remaining games were mostly Xbox Studio games and backwards compatible games.

I know GS has their problems, but my local stores have actually begun to carry DS, Wii, Wii U, 360, and PS3 games again. In much lower volume but it is cool to see it.

@GuyinPA75
Me too, any day of the week. Quite happy for all my games to be digital though. Wait, what we're we talking about?

Gamestop was the primary reason I switched to digital. No more trade-in for pennies circus for me. That was....uhhhh 2013?

I wish they still had Rock Band controllers, I've wanted to play that again for a while

Poor Gamestop, still thinking they are relevant in 2024. Lol. If memory serves correctly, the last game I purchased from them was Skyrim, when they had a midnight release. That was 2011 I believe.

@Pabpictu that’s complete and utterly false and a myth spread by people that don’t know what they’re talking about.
I recommend checking out DoesItPlay.
Majority of games on PlayStation and Nintendo hardware, including ps5, work completely offline from the disc without a patch needed to fix the game.

DoesItPlay checks every physical game and wether they can be started offline from a disc, wether they’re broken without updates, wether updates add additional content and wether the game requires an online check.

Gamestop is the reason physical video game stores disappeared in the first place. They bought out all the competition, monopolized the industry, and basically ran everyone else out of business. Then when they had the market monopolized they got rid of most of their back catalogs and tried to rip everyone off. I liked buying used games before they took over, after it became a why bother situation.

Want to know what the real savior of physical media has been? Ebay. As someone who used to be into retro gaming collecting, that's basically where I got most of my stuff, and even today it's still probably the best source for the majority of retro gaming needs.

@Pabpictu Honestly physical video games really lost their appeal for me last gen. You're right, they definitely became just an alternative to DRM, one where you need to have a disc in a drive in order to boot up a game. At best they're just physical backups, but most games have so much updating that you will probably be stuck downloading most of the game anyways unless you enjoy playing the buggy/barren 1.0 vanilla version of games they have been releasing. I mean lets not kid ourselves and pretend like the games we have had this or last gen have been finished products the day they release, it seems to have become a common practice to take the "release it now, fix it later" approach, making most 1.0's feel like betas. Combine that with all the DLC, and it's like you really aren't getting the full experience straight off a disc anymore. Heck throw live services into the mix and the disc is truly meaningless. My disc copy of The Crew is only useful as a frisbee or drink coaster by now for example.

What really ruined it for me though was how you needed to install the entire disc in order to play any games. The 360 store going offline made me get back into Xbox 360 and one of the best thing about my old disc collection for that console is how nearly all of the games are entirely playable off the disc no installation required. Now THAT is how physical disc media made sense, it truly saved you a ton of space back when hard drive storage was very limited.

@darkswabber Thanks for bringing up DoesItPlay- it's good to have a source with actual facts regarding this!
However, as the numbers on that site show, there are many games that don't work fully without a download, even on PS5 and Switch. Yes, it's a major exaggeration to say that physical games are all just tokens now, but there's still some truth in it.

@BAMozzy Conveniently left out "if you didn't buy digitally at the time, and it's been delisted, and there's no physical copy, you're SOL". I can't buy Deadpool, Armed and Dangerous, Forza 1, 2 or 3, 50 Cent BOTDS, nor NBA Jam on fire digitally.
NBAJOF never got a physical copy, and Deadpool and 50 Cent are quite expensive physically.

Also, with 80+ Million 360s sold, chances are one can still find a working unit. Plus all the games I mentioned (sans NBA) are BWC from disc on an Xbone/XSX. The PS1 is 30 years old, and there are plenty that are functional today, so the idea of a broken console stopping someone isn't very convincing. This isn't the Jaguar CD we're talking about.

@MrMagic And of those that aren't that is NOT the responsibility of MS to 'preserve' - and they are 'preserved' if you want to play on a 360 and you OWN them just like any Game you bought on Cartridge too.

The fact is that MS can't 'preserve' them any more than Sega can preserve ALL the games on Dreamcast or Megadrive. All those 'hundreds' of games I bought on Tape for a Commodore Computer that are not 'preserved'...

Those games ONLY ran on a 360 so you'd need an Xbox 360 to play them which hasn't been made now for a decade. No-one is going to buy a 360 to play games so they are 'preserved' for the 'owners' of those games, even though you'd struggle to buy ALL the discs today as they are ALL out of Print as in 'no longer' made.

If you bought, you can STILL play on your 360 - the Console those games were designed, built and ONLY sold for Xbox 360 hardware. They are 'preserved' in your 360 Library and will remain 'playable' on your 360 (unless they require online servers that are turned off) Again not something MS has control over as EA control Battlefield Servers for example.

Things CHANGE too - and until MS decided they wanted to 'preserve' games, the XB1 for example launched as a completely 'new' next gen hardware. They can 'preserve' their 'own' software, but they have no 'control' over ALL the other Games that are owned by Publishers/Devs etc.

The closure is on OBSOLETE Hardware and the only store still stocking games 'exclusive' to that Hardware has now closed a DECADE after the Hardware stopped being made...

The ONLY people that 'cares' are the tiny 'few' that are 'retro' hobbyists. No-one else is spending money to buy 'new' games on Obsolete Hardware - everyone else is buying games for Current Hardware and that has 'enough' retro Games and of course ALL MS games (bar any that have Licences like Car brands or music) Obviously the makers don't 'care' now otherwise they'd agree to BC...

@Rodimusprime13 I noticed that as well when I recently went to the locations near me. GameStop has filled itself with old toys that no one wants, pokemon cards, useless merchandise of popular series, and those ugly Funko pops. I barely find any new big games in stock. Well, for Xbox that is.

@EVIL-C And as for games like Deadpool - that again has nothing to do with 'Microsoft' or their stance on 'Game Preservation' - same with Forza games too - you can't get an indefinite licence to SELL these games, make money from ALL those car brands....

Those games are out of 'print' to, haven't been made for years on Disc. The Only ones you might find are old stock 'big' bulk buyers (like Amazon Game etc) bought and still haven't sold ALL the copies. They don't keep manufacturing games physically either.

Just like you can't buy Games for your N64 or OG Xbox new anymore, they stopped making them too and some games you'll never see again unless you 'own' both the game and hardware to run it on...

MS can ONLY preserve their OWN software or Make their Hardware 'iterative' upgrades so the 'old' games run on the Hardware - like a PC. The 'Xbox' is a 'fixed spec, OS locked, Console style gaming Box - both Windows, both DX12. Just Windows is a open OS, their Console version is 'locked'

If games get delisted or become so rare if not impossible to find on Physical, then buy Licence games in sales because they'll be 'delisted' or unavailable if 'things' change or in the case of 'car' games, the Licence has run out and they have a 'new' licence for the latest game, then another renew short term licence for the 'next'...

Whether you like the fact MS acquired two big Publishers in a relative short time, as we see from all Bethesda Published games are 'preserved' in Backwards Compatibility and no Doubt, we will see more ABK games now 'preserved' unless Licences make that difficult - Treyarch's Spider-Man for example. But that's 'ownership' of those IP's and Publishing Rights to 'Preserve' their games how they want - bring them 'forward' or 'keep' the old version playable - maybe 'both' - but its up to 'other' publishers/owners to 'preserve' their games (or not)

Bet you wish you’d bought physical copies from GameStop. Then traded them in for more. Over and over until you bled. Bet you wish you bled for game stop.

Another case of gamers being the most entitled and out of touch hobbyists. Congrats 👏🏻

How is Gamestop still around?
Here in Scandinavia, they shut down years ago, and nobody shed a tear.

@GuyinPA75
Agreed that physical bluray movies are of better quality than their digital counterparts (particularly streams), but that's not a comparison that can made with games?

@Steel76 Pretty sure it's just been the meme stonk situation that has kept them alive. Reddit loved Gamestop apparently for some reason. It's like yeah, what a shame if the video game store that put all the better video game stores out of business went under.

I still enjoy physical media for movies and music, (got a sizable vinyl collection and my movie collection is huge), but games? Well, I do still pick up the odd 360/PS3/Switch title, but without the support of 3rd party hardware physical games media is going the way of the dodo.

Physical disks are certainly important. But we don't sell packaged versions of Xbox. At least in Japan, they haven't released a package since "Halo 5: Guardians".
I hope you will release the Physical Disks again.