Major Nelson assured us that at the end of this generation’s lifecycle, when the Xbox One’s servers shut down permanently, you’ll still be able to play your old games.
In an interview with /r/games, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb answered some of the most “upvoted” questions from the popular videogaming sub-reddit. Right off the bat, he was asked what would happen after the Xbox One servers are shut down at the end of the new generation. Specifically, he was asked if games would be unplayable after Microsoft pulled the plug. His response was a reassuring one: “That’s certainly something we would not do. That’s not the way the system is designed. It’s designed for flexibility. But let’s get the system out there first.”
Next, Hryb was asked whether players who were banned from Xbox Live would lose access to the single player portion of all of the games they have registered to their account. “Absolutely not,” Hryb replied with confidence.
“Come with us toward the light on an amazing journey, where we can unlock the potential of great gaming experiences.”
Unfortunately, from this point on his replies are more deflections rather than straight answers. When asked why the Xbox One couldn’t use a physical disk as a “failsafe” to bypass the 24 hour check-in policy, Hryb went on to talk about how its not possible because of how awesome the Xbox One’s “family sharing library” is.
Hryb also seems unshaken by Sony’s press conference, which practically devolved into mockery of the Xbox One. “I don’t think we’re going to change anything [after having seen Sony’s conference]. We’re very happy with what we’ve done with Xbox One.”
Major Nelson seemed to keep coming back to the Xbox One’s “flexibility” and “future proofing” as counters to the policies being scrutinized by reddit users. He ended the interview by again bringing up how great the “family sharing library” system will be, and how he wished more people would ask him about it. If nothing else he seems to be pretty damn excited about the system.
