Well a few weeks back, my Xbox 360 died (again for the 5th time). I blogged last year that Microsoft had finally created a licence migration tool to allow you to transfer all of your purchased content to another console. this was particularly important as once purchased and downloaded, it’s locked to that console ID.

If you want to play it on another XBox (including a fixed one prior to the release of this tool) you needed to sign into XBox Live to prove it’s you. Unfortunately the newly created migration process only allows you to run it once every 12 months. And as I accurately predicted back in May of last year, I knew my now dead fourth XBox wasn’t going to be my last.

So a few weeks back, the same courier picked up my console for repair and whisked it off to Germany for repair. 2.5 weeks later and it’s back all repaired.

However everything wasn’t rosy. They had indicated that to drive customer satisfaction, they had given me a brand new XBox instead of a repairing my old one (more on this later). Now, on the Migration tools FAQ it clearly states that if your XBox is sent back for repair, any licences are automatically transferred if required to the new console. And in fact, if you try and do it again (inside the 12 month period), you’re taken straight to the ‘congrats’ page indicating success: -

My licenses were not automatically transferred this time and was easily proved by signing in using my son’s Live account and only seeing trial versions of the all of the arcade games I’d bought. Re-Downloading the content didn’t work either as the underlying license was still firmly attached to my old console, now presumably sitting somewhere in a warehouse in Germany.

So I contacted support to raise this as an issue. All was relatively painless thankfully. It was immediately flagged as an issue and escalated to the relevant teams with a promise they’d ring me back in < 24 hours. And they did, 15 hours later, on the following day, the escalation team rang me to resolve the issue. A few details were confirmed (XBox ID, my gamer tag etc) and I was told, “all’s done. The licences will be migrated automatically to your new console and we apologise this wasn’t done at replacement time. The licences should be transferred automatically within 30 days”.

Wait, 30 days?! Apparently instructions have to be sent to the billing and accounts department who then transfer the licences. This is likely due to financial reasons and revenue recognition, and I suppose if I think about it in this light, I can see why they don’t offer an open ended ability to transfer your licenses to other consoles. So until then, my children will have to have the inconvenience of signing in as me prior to themselves for starting the games. Luckily though, this is now a transparent process so I won’t need to download any content again (which is cool as I have a LOT of downloaded content).

So some interesting things with respect to this experience: -

• My console didn’t RROD, the DVD Drive simply started to fail to recognise a disk was in the drive. In my eyes, this is likely a DVD Drive failure as opposed to something more nasty. However, it looks like it’s now simply easier (and cheaper) to simply send out a new XBox as opposed to breaking it down, repairing the console and re-packaging it back up again. The rework costs here are likely quite expensive compared to simply shipping a new one out.
• I’ve now got over 3 months of free XBox Live Gold membership due to failing XBox’s. You’re automatically given a one month coupon whenever your console is repaired.
• Absolute cudos and credit to Microsoft’s Larry Hryb (Major Nelson). I had tweeted a question to him with respect to this issue and what I should do and he responded within 10 minutes that I contact support right away and they’d sort it. Given, I’m sure, how busy his twitter feed is, I’m incredibly impressed at the response time of Microsoft’s main voice for Xbox online.

Was reading some feeds today and discovered on one of my gaming feeds that a certain software house has copied environments from one of the biggest games last year and put it into their own game.

Now, when I initially read this, I thought, well, if an environment's 'presence' and 'setting' is right, then ok, I could see how the ambience from the environment (lighting etc) could be copied over to another game in a similar genre.

However when I was looked at the screen shots, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing.

Shown below are the offending screen shots. Remember these are from two TOTALLY separate games, written by different developers and published by different publishers.

How the developers ever imagined this wouldn't be noticed is quite beyond me.

Now, coder's throughout all industries use code snippets, 'design patterns' and algorithms created by other developers. From a developer's perspective, it's a great self-teaching tool as well as for the original developer to know that that great piece of code they laboured over is being admired and used elsewhere. But artwork? And more specifically, almost identical textures? I doubt the same argument applies.

I'm sure Bethesda are currently investigating their options here (the top is from Oblivion which is the original).

UPDATE: This story has hit the gaming world and the internet in a big way over the last 48 hours as the amount of games that have 'made it into' "Limbo" is huge. WikiPedia even has a page now detailing the controversy. Go take a read, it's quite astounding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_of_the_Lost#Controversy

UPDATE 2: NeoGaf.com has an absolutely fantastic thread on this. It's long, but if you have some time to spare it's probably the best read you'll have in weeks. It also contains a huge amount images showing what games have been 'ripped'. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=310683

Well the time is drawing close where the sequel to the much-revered action game Ninja Gaiden on the XBox is about to be released.

Personally I can't wait. I beat the first game all the way through and given the reputation of how hard the game was, I was kinda happy when I completed it (it really was rock hard in places). And before anyone asks, no, this wasn't the 'Black' version which was a little easier by way of the Ninja Dog difficulty. This was the original, "I'm going to own you" version. And it did that...on a great many occasions!

From initial reviews it seems to be more of the same but more fluid and more body parts :-P. However what concerns me a little is some of the feedback that certain bosses and battles now rely upon luck in some situations. In the original,  the 'fighting' engine was a thing of beauty itself and once you'd mastered the numerous combos, any failing was your's alone. If luck now comes into it in a heavy degree, I'll be slightly disappointed.

I've also managed to track down when the Demo is finally released onto XBox live for people to get a taster. Most of web (and Xbox.com as well) have always reported that a demo would be available in May. Given there's only one day left, I think we can safely say it's not going to happen. According to Talking About Games, the demo's coming on June 3rd (which is the release date in the USA). Europe get's the game on the 6th June so it's quite probable we'll get the demo at the same time as well.

At last, after I'm sure an immense weight of customer feedback and complaints (me included), Microsoft have announced they are releasing a tool in June that will allow you to consolidate all of your licenses for the software/media you've downloaded onto one Console.

This tool is absolutely required as anyone will tell you who's experienced the dreaded Red Ring of Death (RRoD).

All content when downloaded is currently locked to the combination of the console, the hard disk AND the Xbox Live GamerTag. This means once you receive back your 'new' Xbox after a repair, any content downloaded will NOT be playable unless you're connected to Xbox Live.

Even worse, for any other accounts also on that console (your children's for example) they will also not be able to play that content at all in most cases. In some cases, as in Arcade games, 'you' need to sign in first to unlock the content for whoever wants to play it.

This is totally inconvenient, a real pain and in almost all cases , incredibly restrictive on the content you've legally purchased. For example, my daughter has just gotten hooked on Oblivion. I literally lived this game a year or so back and clocked up an embarrassingly large number of hours on it. I also bought a number of add-on modules to it (including grabbing a few of the modules when they were offered free).

My daughter only gets to 'see' the most recent of modules that I downloaded (the Fighter's Stronghold when it was initially released). This is because this is the only module that was downloaded onto this console (I'm now on my FOURTH 360 believe it or not). All others that I rightfully purchased and downloaded were initially downloaded onto one of my previous consoles so she doesn't see them at all.

Hopefully, once this tool is available, I can, from reading the interview, re-register all of my downloaded content onto my most recent 360 (sure it won't be the last though...) and Maggie (my daughter) should, the next time she opens up Oblivion, be able to see all manner of new fun things to do...

About time is all I can say...

The interview in Next Generation detailing this is available here.