You’ll soon no longer be able to buy games digitally on the Xbox 360: Microsoft is shutting down the digital store for its game console on Monday. The company announced the move last August and confirmed it as recently as May in a blog entry — but the exact timing isn’t known.
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As the Xbox 360 store closes, DLC cannot be purchased digitally. However, games that have already been purchased can still be re-downloaded. Users can also continue to purchase and install titles on physical storage media. Even multiplayer titles should work as long as the publishers of these games support online servers. Cloud services for backing up saved games should also continue to operate.
Fans of the Xbox 360 generation can also play many of their favorite games on Microsoft’s new console: the Xbox Series X/S is backwards compatible, meaning it works with most games that were originally released for the Xbox 360. List of compatible games Microsoft makes it available on a website.
19 years after release
The Xbox 360 hit the market in late 2005, so it’s now almost 19 years old. The fact that stores stocking older game consoles will close sooner or later is a well-known phenomenon in the industry. A study by the Video Game History Foundation shows that 87 percent of all video games released before 2010 can no longer be purchased on current platforms.
When Nintendo shut down digital stores for the 3DS and Wii U, about 1,000 video games were lost, as the Video Game History Foundation wrote last year. Due to the Series X/S’s backward compatibility, the impact of the closed Xbox 360 store should be less severe.
The store for the PS3, released in 2006, is still open. As of now, Sony has not announced a shutdown date.
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