Microsoft will have a team of people looking after the xbox live servers. I can not say how many hours they actually put into the servers but they will probably be a 24 hour team.
Its not that they wanted them to have it but the orignal xbox live was out of date and costed them to run out of date servers that was not needed and not used as much as the newer servers.
No they do not
There are many places where one can purchase used sun servers. There are many used computer equipment sites on the web that offer these servers. One may also use eBay to purchase these servers.
Not anymore, the servers closed on April 15, 2010 for all xbox games
Yes, all content on the Marketplace needs either a silver membership or gold membership in order to download content, also remember that one needs a connection to the Microsoft's Xbox Live servers in order to use Xbox Live at all.
No, it was only said that some support will be discontinued. That means no more console production, new game releases, etc. As for servers, those will remain functional and viable much longer, especially considering Microsoft shut down the original Xbox live servers in 2010 - 5 years after the release of the 360. The 360 is much more common than the Xbox ever was, not to mention Xbox LIVE over the 360 and One is the same network, vs. the original LIVE which was independent from the 360's version.
You can play many regular Xbox games on the Xbox 360.
No unfortunately not. Xbox and Sony have their own servers for online gaming and they cannot connect with each other.
yes it is. it would be announced if they were shutting down the servers.
I got the same problem and called Xbox support and Windows live support. It ended up being that the servers for the payment area were down, making you unable to do what ever you were doing. Nothing is wrong with your xbox or account, but the servers are down.
Yes, all content on the Marketplace needs either a silver membership or gold membership in order to download content, also remember that one needs a connection to the Microsoft's Xbox Live servers in order to use Xbox Live at all.