Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console is almost twenty years old. It’ll be even closer to that milestone when Microsoft shuts down the Xbox 360 Store and Marketplace in July 2024 but it won’t quite make it across the finish line intact. The console’s not going away. As long as it still works, it should do what you bought it for, but the storefront is toast a little under a year from now.
The last day for making a purchase from the old familiar place will be 28 July 2024. That’s how long you have to buy anything you’ve been putting off (terms and conditions apply) before you’re stuck rummaging through Cash Converters hoping someone’s sold off an old copy of Rumble Roses XX (which, before you check, isn’t available on South Africa’s digital store either. Behave yourself).
Existence is a circle
It shouldn’t be surprising that this is happening. Some titles have already slipped away from the store early (to beat the rush) and Microsoft is also no longer making Xbox One games. You thought that the 360 store was going to stick around forever? Actually, it will. Kinda. In a sense.
See, the Xbox 360 store is going away which means that any games hosted on that store are also going away. There is one difference, though. If the title is on Microsoft’s backwards-compatible list, it’ll remain on sale on the Xbox One or Xbox Series consoles’ stores. If you’re still using your 360, you’ll probably be able to work around the store closure by buying from one of the new shopfronts.
Anything that’s not backwards compatible. though, is toast. If you’ve already bought a title, and any DLC tied to your account, that will remain downloadable on your console. Multiplayer will continue to function as well, provided it’s a game that still has active servers. Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts have all been shutting down servers recently. Activision, weirdly, has restarted a few.
Also getting the chop on 29 July 2024 is Microsoft Movies & TV, an app that you… probably don’t use. But if you somehow do, that is also coming to an end. As all things do.
