Friday, November 7, 2008
It's 2008 And I Still Can't E-mail Game Saves Without Hassle.
Microsoft runs Hotmail, a free e-mail service. Hotmail gives you five gigabytes of space. Microsoft also runs Xbox Live, which gives you no online space, but does require you to associate your Xbox Live Gamertag with a Microsoft network account.
What I'm proposing is a way to use a portion of your online free e-mail storage as dedicated Xbox game save backup space. You would be able to see what game saves you have in your online space from Hotmail or whatever service you're using, but you wouldn't be able to download them to a PC. The only places the files could exist would be in the online storage or on your Xbox. Sharing game saves wouldn't even have to be included in this feature, though in a perfect world that would be integrated into the data management system as well.
I understand why this kind of thing isn't being done right now: Primarily, allowing game saves to be backed up online could cut into Xbox Memory Unit sales. Second, sharing game saves is already being done, but mostly so that people can cheat their way to high gamerscore or other nefarious ends.
If there were a way to sign a game save with a player's information (the way that Microsoft signs Xbox executables so that only authorized code can run on the Xbox), then we could share saves through Microsoft, we just wouldn't be able to earn Achievements with someone else's saves.
What do you think? Do you see anything wrong with the lack of some kind of game save backup and/or sharing service from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft?
What I'm proposing is a way to use a portion of your online free e-mail storage as dedicated Xbox game save backup space. You would be able to see what game saves you have in your online space from Hotmail or whatever service you're using, but you wouldn't be able to download them to a PC. The only places the files could exist would be in the online storage or on your Xbox. Sharing game saves wouldn't even have to be included in this feature, though in a perfect world that would be integrated into the data management system as well.
I understand why this kind of thing isn't being done right now: Primarily, allowing game saves to be backed up online could cut into Xbox Memory Unit sales. Second, sharing game saves is already being done, but mostly so that people can cheat their way to high gamerscore or other nefarious ends.
If there were a way to sign a game save with a player's information (the way that Microsoft signs Xbox executables so that only authorized code can run on the Xbox), then we could share saves through Microsoft, we just wouldn't be able to earn Achievements with someone else's saves.
What do you think? Do you see anything wrong with the lack of some kind of game save backup and/or sharing service from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft?
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It sounds like a good idea, but I don't see it coming to pass anytime soon. Keep in mind, back when Sony closed a holes in the PSP firmware, the new way to get the PSP to run unsigned code came via a hacked savegame for GTA Liberty City Stories. And on Nintendo's side, the Wii was first able to run unsigned code from a bug exploited by a save in Twilight Princess, and here we are now with a software based ISO loader and a custom firmware in the works.
While I'm sure there are plenty of ways to get the data off the HDD of a 360, after seeing these two examples, I don't see Microsoft as being particularly eager to facilitate save trading.
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While I'm sure there are plenty of ways to get the data off the HDD of a 360, after seeing these two examples, I don't see Microsoft as being particularly eager to facilitate save trading.
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