Is there any possible way too...

[Rct3fan00]

Is there any possible way of getting the full version of Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox 360? I mean, I bought the game when I was 11, on my original xbox, which eventually my brother claimed for himself. I got myself my own xbox finally, and I really want to play MBU with old MBU friends such as Hagaroo, xD3athp0ny, p00p1nmyface, etc... but there is no way to download it from the xbox live marketplace.

My brother has the full version on his Xbox but there is not a way to receive it, I tried copying it, and transferring it to my system, but I can't unless I transfer a "Content Rights" type file, but then all of my brothers DLC won't be accessible to him. So as for right now I haveno CLUE on how to get it. Any suggestions guys?

Is there ANYTHING, I could possibly do? I have the trial version right now, when I try to click on unlock full game, it gives me the option, at first it says "0 MS Points" and then when I click "Download now" Some absurd number comes up such as "You need 439438423894329432894289 MS Points to-" and I literally shit my pants (not really though). It was a very odd error.

I hope there is something? If not, then crud.

Thanks!

[FruBlox]

No, it's not on the xbox live market anymore after Garagegames lost the distribution rights to it (which is also why MBG is not available). If you had the game then you were still able to play it, the same way we do with MBG, but from what you wrote it doesn't seem there will be a way for you to get it onto your xbox.

[Rct3fan00]

The only thing I don't understand is... how on earth did GG lose rights to somethng they created?!

[FruBlox]

They sold the rights to another company. Just because you make something doesn't mean you will always own all the rights to use it. In Garagegame's case, they still have the rights that say they own it (which is why they can still have their name on it), but they lost the rights to distribute it.

And yeah, I don't know why they sold the rights or even how it actually went down, but that's how it stands today.

[Sporlo]

GG was bought out way back in 2007 by IAC. Since then, GG went through a ridiculous amount of restructuring and rebranding. When the dust settled, GG ended up as a child to Graham Software Development (GSD), while MBG itself remained in the hands of IAC. Both IAC and GSD are holding companies.
I think what happened is that in order to get InstantAction up and running, GG had to give up rights to games like MBG. Then, since IA was a financial flop, IAC abandoned GG and kept MBG. I've been trying to understand the whole story for 3 years now. The itty bitty details are hard to come by.

When you are owned by someone else, you don't really have any rights.

EDIT: holy crap, I was ninj'd!! That hasn't happened to me in years!!!

[FruBlox]

Apr 24, 2013 23:19:21 GMT Sporlo said:

GG was bought out way back in 2007 by IAC. Since then, GG went through a ridiculous amount of restructuring and rebranding. When the dust settled, GG ended up as a child to Graham Software Development (GSD), while MBG itself remained in the hands of IAC. Both IAC and GSD are holding companies.
I think what happened is that in order to get InstantAction up and running, GG had to give up rights to games like MBG. Then, since IA was a financial flop, IAC abandoned GG and kept MBG. I've been trying to understand the whole story for 3 years now. The itty bitty details are hard to come by.

When you are owned by someone else, you don't really have any rights.

EDIT: holy crap, I was ninj'd!! That hasn't happened to me in years!!!

Yeah, it's a pretty complicated story of rights and ownership. I still am sad to see that Graham Software Development (who I believe now own the rights to MB) haven't done anything with Marble Blast.

P.S. It feels great to ninja someone.

[IsraeliRD]

lol no IAC bought GG in 2007, and later renamed GG to TorquePowered. InstantAction was IAC's big new thing and TP became a subdivision of IA (meaning it now relies on IA).
However IA didn't turn out as expected, as not enough companies signed in for the new IAv2 and obv. there was no arcade since they actually shut it down until IAv2 would arrive (technically a bit later than that...).
So IAC decided to kill IA without a warning, and since TP was only a subdivision rather than "own" it lost all the funding and it was shutting down.

Now what happens when TP still has money owed? Gotta sell its things to come up with money. Among selling its games like Legions to a different company (not IAC), Marble Blast itself was sold to IAC with all copyrights, source, IP etc. Torque engine itself was supposed to be sold, but no one interested came up iirc.

Eventually GG was sold to GSD as Sporlo said (and is now its sub-company so GSD CAN kill them), but obviously does not have rights or anything to MB.

IAC itself, well, its odd. Due to unknown reasons it decided to kill all downloads to Marble Blast series (gold, ultra) so those cannot be purchased. The only one remaining is the Mac Games Store. What kind of a deal these two have is unknown, because IAC has no reason to have it in there.
However there DOES seem to be something underlying because IAC does honor the previous license of Gold/Ultra that GG created so possibly something with Apple is happening.
Mind you, this license also allows us to create mods to MB.

Lastly there was a new MBU 2 game in progress, which was halted as well. Details of it are completely unknown. The only thing I ever heard about it was GG being excited about "smooth slopes" and GG not being the actual devs. of the new game.
I'm also confirming that MB was going to be sold from IAC to a diff. company, and I know a number of companies, as well as MB's original developers and even GarageGames were interested. However IAC dropped the ball and stopped all communications in June 2011. Nothing has since been heard of.

For those that wonder, the tag price was $US750,000. Now it's unknown as IAC clearly isn't planning to do anything with it.

[Sporlo]

Aaahhh, I remember that video with the "smooth slopes." Such a tease.

And thank you for yet another recap. I learn more details with each retelling of the story!

[Rct3fan00]

Great to know all of this! Sad to hear they won't be doing anything with MB. Such a waste

[FruBlox]

Yep I remember watching the Polysoup demo video. It looked pretty fun to roll around on but there really wasn't anything else to the demo. If GG wasn't developing it then I'm actually curious as to how it would have played out, and how radically different it would be.

[Jeff]

2007? I thought it was much more recent than that. Well at least we can mod marble blast and have multiplayer through mbg =)

[Rct3fan00]

Hoorah Jeff!

FruBlox - Where could that video be found?

[Trace]

Apr 26, 2013 1:13:16 GMT Rct3fan00 said:

Hoorah Jeff!

FruBlox - Where could that video be found?

vimeo.com/2186991

[Sporlo]

Apr 25, 2013 21:43:38 GMT Jeff said:

2007? I thought it was much more recent than that.

I thought it was too, but I think we didn't realize it because IAC never actually exercised their power until they created IA. So that was the first anyone had ever heard of them.

Apr 26, 2013 1:36:26 GMT Trace said:

Apr 26, 2013 1:13:16 GMT Rct3fan00 said:

FruBlox - Where could that video be found?

vimeo.com/2186991

It's a damn shame that such a great piece of software was trashed.

[IsraeliRD]

It's just the Torque XNA demo (that probably still exists as Torque X). All they did was have Alex Swanson work in Maya for a few weeks to create this, and made the engine itself in a few weeks as well and let it loose. This is not the actual MBU 2 I heard of.

[Sporlo]

haha well then I am even more indignant!

[Rct3fan00]

I've seen that before. Looks pretty similar to MBU.