For a while now, I've realized the fact that, when MS eventually removes 360 access to XBL (probably a few years into their next console), that man games will be unable to be played properly due to lack of access to updates (and how intangible most are on your memory devices). In addition, man DLCs and existing savegames will be rendered unusable without the updates. So my question is so: Is this site cataloging updates for ALL Xbox 360 games? So that at that theoretical point in the future when MS cuts access to XBL for the 360, I could use the files here to ensure I can keep playing my games, DLC, and savegames? And that it requires no hacking or modding of the system to achieve, but just a USB stick? Because if that IS the case, this is certainly a commendable task you're doing here, building a library of the updates like this.
That's awesome. I'm glad to know there are people with foresight working to ensure the Xbox 360 is fully playable even after MS inevitably drops support for it at some future date. Well, minus online components, of course. I do have a quick question about the updates, though. I know that some are "soft" updates (don't appear in the memory menu, and are cleared by clearing the system cache) and some are "hard" updates (appear as an actual file, unaffected by system cache). So for the soft updates, having it on any memory device attached to the 360 will count as it being present, and work just fine? So I could just have a USB device I keep plugged in specifically to contain all the updates I need? Also, if I load an update onto the USB device and start the game, and it doesn't prompt for an update download, that's how I can know I have the latest copy of that game's updates for my region, correct? EDIT: One other question. How certain is it that the TUs are in a particular order? Because some earlier updates seem to have been uploaded later than later updates. Or is it based off of the file extension (which is what it looks like), so even if an update is uploaded earlier AND is a smaller filesize, it could still be a more recent update than the larger, more recently uploaded TU?
Indeed. Either type of update work from USB, they just have to be in the correct location in the file structure. The only significant difference between the two is that you'll notice the 'hard' patches are typically larger files while the 'soft' patches are smaller. Microsoft intended ALL patches to be stored in the cache, though they allow patches larger than a certain size to be stored in the game data area to make it that bit more convenient (imagine having to frequently download the same large patch over and over) because the XBox360's cache cannot be relied upon to store data permanently, whereas the 'soft' patches are rather small so they're really fast downloads that don't get in the way too much.
