Xbox 360 store going offline in July 2024

It’s the end of an era for the Xbox 360. Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s taking the Xbox 360 Store offline in 2024, just a couple years shy of the console’s 20th anniversary. The store shutdown has no bearing on your ability to play Xbox 360 games, however — all games and DLC will remain playable on the Xbox 360 and newer consoles via backward compatibility, Microsoft said in its news release.

Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 Store purchases will cease on July 29, 2024. Other entertainment products won’t work anymore either, like the Microsoft Movies & TV app. Up to that point, you’ll be able to buy games and DLC through the Xbox 360 Store as well as the online market. Beyond games and entertainment, “trials, add-ons, avatar items, gamerpics, game trailers, and videos” will be unavailable to purchase alongside “gamertag changes on Xbox 360, Xbox subscriptions on Xbox 360, [and] in-game purchases.” Unfortunately, not all video games on Xbox 360 are backwards-compatible, which will make several games significantly harder to get and play. TrueAchievements, the gaming website, has a listing of Xbox 360 Store games that cannot be played on older consoles.

Similarly, there are no changes to the purchase of Xbox 360 compatible games in Xbox One stores or Xbox Series X. Microsoft confirmed that Xbox 360’s network for multiplayer will also remain online as long the publisher continues to offer online servers. “You can still save your games and progress to the cloud, and if you choose to continue any of those available games on Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S, those cloud saves will transfer over,” it wrote.

Crucially, there’s also nothing keeping you from purchasing games physically; 360 games are pretty readily available in physical form, though there are some games that are harder to get your hands on. Microsoft offers a complete FAQ on the Xbox 360 Store closing and Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Microsoft ceased producing Xbox 360 consoles several years after Xbox One’s release. In North America the Xbox 360 console was released for the first time in 2005. Some would describe this as a groundbreaking development. Microsoft’s sold more than 84 million consoles by 2014, making it one of the top-selling consoles of all time and an important part of Microsoft’s rise in the console market. Xbox 360 holds a very special place in history for multiplayer games. Halo 3The following are some examples of how to get started: Gears of WarThe multiplayer experience on consoles was defined by this generation. Xbox Live Indie Games was another important feature in the introduction of indie games, but that service closed in 2016.

Then there’s the Xbox 360’s Gamerscore system, which was fully implemented with the Xbox 360’s launch. It wasn’t the first console or game to introduce an achievement system, but was the sustaining system for platforms, kicked off before the likes of Valve and Sony added their own systems. Of course, in talking about the legacy of the Xbox 360, we can’t ignore the “Red Ring of Death,” an infamous flashing red light that denoted a dead Xbox.