Damn. I'm no network engineer, but I'm pretty sure XBox LIVE [i]gaming[/i] is predominately P2P, so what gives? Yes, save for a few oddballs like Delta Force: Blackhawk Down using dedicated servers, EA games connecting through EA and Steel Batallion (which was shut down eons ago anyway), we are effectively paying to play these games by hosting them on our boxes. Why am I still able to play PC games from the DOS era on-line yet, as of April 15th, won't be able to play Original XBox games on-line? The LAN tunneling services (XBConnect, Xlink KAI) are pretty much case and point, we can play 'on-line' using those at no cost, so why can't Microsoft let us do the same through some sort of server-side emulation layer that only lets us play without allowing access to XBox LIVE features such as friends, messaging etc? I wouldn't be in such a rage if I knew the technical justification behind such a decision. Yes, Nelson claims that Microsoft's engineers gave it great thought and I don't doubt that, but we aren't idiots; they owe us a reason considering we pay for the service. But maybe us being intelligent consumers is precisely the point, any "justification" could be shot down in flames by a resident/lurking network/software engineer. I haven't posted on here in over 5-6 months, but this news was just too shocking. End Rant. -- What about DLC? I can only assume that DLC access will be removed. If that's going to be the case, allow us to download DLC for any title at no cost; it's going to become worthless anyway, right? Of course, not all games are going to be [i]drastically[/i] affected. Quite a few games had a LAN option, so one could always use tunneling software. Halo 2, SC: Chaos Theory, Unreal Championship/Liandri Conflict, Pariah and Doom 3 come to mind. In fact, most LIVE-enabled games had some form of LAN access, so it's not all doom and gloom! Fighting games are the exception to this rule, however, so don't expect to play Third Strike, MK:Deception, KOF:Neowave or Capcom vs. SNK 2 online; then again, fighting games are best played locally anyway. We only have the "please can we have more than 100 friends" whiners to thank. Well you got what you wished for, and then some; what scares me is that Microsoft might pull a similar stunt in the later generations. I doubt we'll get a price cut, as the yet-to-be-announced features may offset the savings brought about by this decision. Oh well, that's progress for you. Time to give Halo 2 the send off it deserves; my 5508+ games will not be forgotten. Goodbye XBox LIVE 1-3.x, bring on the next generation.