You may recall when I published my article on the April 2019 Games With Gold game announcement video that there was something I had serious contention with: the statement that there were “online gameplay modes” available for Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Why was this such a bad thing to say? Because, the original Xbox Live service, which all games for the original Xbox console used, was shut down on April 15th 2010 – just shy of 9 years ago! That means there is absolutely no way to play these games online using the Xbox Live service. Period.
To claim online play modes, therefore, could be seen as false advertising – I don’t mean in the “I want to speak to a manager” way that most people mad at retail stores claim it to be, I mean actual legal, by the book false advertising.
This wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft has changed these videos to fix mistakes, either — a few of them over the past few years have had incorrect gamerscore totals and I think one may have listed a games value incorrectly, an the videos were taken down, editied, and re-uploaded to reflect the “fixed” numbers. Those, honestly, I don’t think too many would care about – especially gamerscore available for a given title.
The ability to play a game online, however, is quite a thing to say when there is absolutely no way ever to be able to properly play the game online.
Whatever case, Microsoft naturally would do better to edit such mistakes to ensure they accurately advertise the value and capabilities of what is being offered, rather than be claimed to be lying to customers and face a possible class action suit for false advertising.
I must state again that XlinkKai and other similar services, which simulate local area game play, do not in any way, shape, or form count. Not only are they 3rd party services, and not Xbox Live itself, but they simulate Local Area Network connections only – they do not simulate, nor allow access to game play options that were part of the Xbox Live service, and regardless certainly are not what Major Nelson would be speaking of in the video itself. Period. I have a whole article coming on that shortly.
Nor does the fact you may be playing an original Xbox title on the Xbox 360 or Xbox One change the fact that the Xbox Live service version used was unique to those titles, and is effectively a “part of” those games, unable to really be updated.
Now, one person (who was actually nice to chat with regarding this) inquired about the possibility of some kind of update to the game restoring online play. While I understand where he was coming from in spirit, I had to break down the logistics of such so he could understand just why the idea wasn’t going to happen.
1: The Xbox Live service that was used for original Xbox Games was not the same as what exists now, and is effectively incompatible with it, hence why the original XBL service was shut down to begin with – to remove those limits from the service so it could grow into what it is now.
2: The idea presumed that EA still had the source code to, and tools to edit the game, but also had interest in even making such changes.
3: It presumed Microsoft would go through the effort to create some kind of patch for the original XBL service specifically for this game to somehow allow it to function using the current XBL infrastructure without issue.
4: It presumed these companies would actually go through all this effort, all the coding, testing, compiling, and spend the money and time on all of this for a game that’s being given away for free.
He accepted this, understanding where the flaws were in the idea. It was nice to see someone who wanted to learn, and I hope it put some thing in perspective.
What it all boils down to is that they had Major Nelson read an old blurb for the game when it was new, when they should have checked and edited what was to be said, given the context. As is clear from comments, many people don’t even seem to know that Xbox Live for the original Xbox console and its games was shut down, and this could have caused some issues.
Honestly, Microsoft probably would do well to stop giving away Xbox software on Games With Gold, sticking only to Xbox 360 and Xbox One games, to avoid this issue entirely.
Anyway, for the sake of comparison, here’s the original video re-uploaded by another user, followed by the “fixed” video. Note the hard cut a 1:24 in the “fixed” video.
Original:
Edited: