Gamers mourn Xbox 360 after digital store shutdown

Microsoft has officially shut off access to the Xbox 360 Marketplace. Gamers now mourn the loss of the iconic console’s storefront — and the “hundreds” of games that are no longer accessible due to the closure, as the Video Game History Foundation posted on X.

The Xbox 360 went on sale Nov. 22, 2005 and ushered in a new generation of multiplayer gaming. The Xbox 360 Marketplace made it just shy of its 20th anniversary; the PlayStation 3 store remains the final frontier of this console generation’s online services, as Nintendo took its Wii Shop offline in 2019. (Sony Interactive Entertainment tried to close its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita storefront, but reversed the decision after player outcry.)

“Today the Xbox 360 Marketplace shuts down for good, taking hundreds of games and DLC off the market, with no legal way to access them,” the Video Game History Foundation wrote on X. “We’re working to fix copyright law for game preservation, but for now, we figured a cake wouldn’t hurt.”

Microsoft ran huge sales on Xbox 360 Marketplace games in the leadup to the store closure — a last hurrah for buy digital Xbox 360 games. Microsoft has added a ton of games to its backward compatibility service, making many games available to play on its newer consoles, the Xbox One and Xbox Series X. But there are plenty of games that had digital-only releases that aren’t compatible with newer consoles — and that creates a big (legal) problem for accessing those games. Games that were purchased before the storefront closure will still be accessible to people who own (or, rather, who license) them.

Gamers continue to gather on social media and in forums to say goodbye to the storefront and the games that won’t live past its demise. Larry Hryb, the former Xbox exec who is better known to the Xbox community as Major Nelson, posted a tribute to the console marketplace to X: “Almost 19 years on, all good things must come to an end. We are in the final 24 hours (or so) of the Xbox 360 Marketplace,” he wrote. “It was my pleasure sharing all the thousands of marketplace sales and updates I’ve given over the years. Thank for having fun, playing fair and filing feedback.”

RIP, Xbox 360 Marketplace. It’s been real.