The Xbox 360 store won’t live to see its 20th birthday

polygon.com:

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 said that players will no longer be able to purchase games on the Xbox 360 Store come July 29, 2024. Other entertainment products won’t work anymore either, like the Microsoft Movies & TV app. You have up until that date to purchase games and DLC from the Xbox 360 Store and the online marketplace. 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. Gaming website TrueAchievements has a list of games that are not playable on newer consoles, if you want to plan ahead for the Xbox 360 Store shutdown.

Likewise, nothing is changing with the ability to buy Xbox 360 backward-compatible games from Xbox One and Xbox Series X stores. The Xbox 360 network will remain online, too, for multiplayer support for as long as the publisher supports online servers, Microsoft said. “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