: That's actually a pretty damn big issue with mandatory online requirements.
: They need to ensure that players will continue to be able to use the XBO
: indefinitely, even after it is discontinued. And by
: "indefinitely" I mean "indefinitely, as in 50 years from
: now if it still works. Perhaps once its successor comes out, they should
: implement a system update that allows it to continue playing offline. I
: can still play my older systems to this day (I've had my NES, Genesis, and
: SNES for over 25, 21, and 19 years, respectively), and assuming they still
: work I can pass them down to my grandkids after I'm dead. Likewise, I
: should be able to continue playing my XBO (should I choose to get one)
: until the day it dies without having to worry about some server still
: being around.

I think their thought process now, which is very different from decades ago, is not about sustainability into the distant future. Rather than the tree of products growing out from the roots over time, they aim to have a single stream of product where each moves on to another. They drop support for an old product with the expectation that customers will be upgrading; effectively, anything once accessible with old hardware will eventually become accessible on new hardware, so retaining the old product (other than for nostalgia) is pointless.

It's rose-coloured glasses on their part. There will always be people who keep and value and even use old products. But, as we're seeing, those aren't their target demo.

Heck I'm confident that even unsupported old games that haven't been made backwards compatible will eventually become available in some manner on an OXbox emulator..somewhere. Perhaps even farther down the product line with much advanced hardware and an open emulator on the Xbox 20X6. People will find a way :P.

Nonetheless, here and now, the single product stream just pisses people off :)

Microsoft has a brand, not a series of products: Xbox* and Xbox Live*. For them, the hardware will cycle out and improve, and the Live service will continue expand.