After 18 years, the Xbox 360 store is shutting down, taking hundreds of digital games with it

gamesradar.com:

Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox 360 marketplace is set to shut down in 2024, nearly two decades after the storefront's original launch in 2005.

As of July 29, 2024, you will no longer be able to purchase Xbox 360 games through the console itself or the legacy web store. However, you'll still be able to purchase backwards compatible Xbox 360 games to play on modern Xbox consoles.

Even on Xbox 360, Microsoft promises that you'll continue to be able to redownload and play previously purchased games. Multiplayer servers for these delisted games are unaffected by this news - it'll still be up to each individual game's publisher to decide how long the servers should stay running.

While many of the most beloved Xbox 360 games are backwards compatible on modern Xbox consoles, those games represent just a fraction of the platform's library. Wikipedia's last count suggests that, out of 2,154 games released in total for Xbox 360 over its lifetime, only 633 have been made compatible with newer consoles. Notable absences include everything from Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to most of Microsoft's own Forza series.

The Xbox 360 marketplace originally launched alongside the console itself on November 22, 2005. Its early days are mostly remembered for Xbox Live Arcade, a curated selection of small independent titles that helped kickstart the indie gaming explosion, bringing us classics like Braid and Castle Crashers. The service also included DLC and no shortage of very bad paid profile pictures, and eventually expanded to include full digital versions of retail games.

Earlier this year, Microsoft posted a support article saying that the Xbox 360 store would shut down in May 2023, though company representatives quickly noted that