You know, it would be nice if Microsoft did a Sega and allowed their xbox fans to make their own servers for xbox live via an emulator or something.
But alas, Moneysoft wouldn't do anthing nice for their customers unless they profited from it.
(Its a shame, as I recently got a load of old xbox games that would've been cool to play online, (if I could find the players!! XD))
Fortunately a lot of old xbox games had local multiplayer, so its not so huge a deal.
But when the 360 servers close down, it will be a much bigger shame, as hardly any games these days have local multiplayer.
I mean, Left 4 Dead 2, is designed so that most of the game is online, without Live, you could only play offline campaign with the lame bots, and 2 player co-op.
For this game you can use LAN, but again, hardly any 360 games have LAN support neither.
This could leave a void.
(But Micr$soft will likely have backwards compatibility with the 360 on its next console, (but I reckon ol' xbox will not, (as its only software emulation)).
(Also anyone know how to cancel an old xbox live account, I made one in order to get Phantasy Star Online to work on my old xbox, (as it needs one to play it offline), and now I keep getting automated messages on my email saying their gonna charge me soon, (but the microsoft website doesn't see the card I used as a payment choice)
(Again its Microsofts fault on this part, as they didn't update their xbox emulator to support this game...))