While the gaming world is getting excited for the launch of Halo Infinite, things are beak for the original Halo Xbox 360 games. Back in December 2020, 343 Industries had stated that they planned on sunsetting the legacy Halo Xbox 360 games. However, they didn’t have a date on when this would happen. Today, the original Waypoint article that has been updated, they’ve announced that on January 13, 2022, online services for all legacy Halo Xbox 360 games would be discontinued.
Every cycle spent maintaining and supporting Xbox 360 legacy services is time and energy not spent on the future of Halo. To that end – today we are announcing our intention to sunset our Halo Xbox 360 legacy services to fully focus on the future of the franchise. On January 13, 2022, online services for legacy Halo Xbox 360 titles will be discontinued. Owners of these titles will still be able to play these games indefinitely, however, certain online features and experiences, particularly online matchmaking, will be limited or disabled.
With these services being shut down, it’s not as if this would happen all at once. Instead, 343i has planned for this and had slowly been migrating over in-game content over to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection since Fall 2019. Then they notified players about the sunsetting back in December 2020, as well as halting all sales of legacy Halo Xbox 360 titles. 343i will continue to notify everyone that as of January 13, 2022, the legacy Halo Xbox 360 services will be terminated.
With that all in place, the final piece is the eventual closing of the services. This will be a sad day as there are still a number of players who still play Halo on the Xbox 360 to this day.
As for what will officially happen once the services are sunsetting, the following legacy Halo Xbox 360 games will be impacted:
- Halo: Reach
- Halo 4
- Halo 3
- Halo 3: ODST
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
- Spartan Assault
- Halo Wars
While these games will still be playable offline, however, a number of features will be either limited or not available at all.
While these classic titles will see an end for the Xbox 360, they’ll live on in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, as they were rebuilt to take advantage of newer services and functions.
Given that the Xbox 360 was released nearly 18 years ago and that gamers are still playing these games on the console, it is a testament to what made the console so great. The Xbox 360 had one of the best runs in gaming history, but sadly at least for Halo, its time is up. Despite it all, I’ll still have my memories of my friends and me trying to make it through Halo 3 and 4, and dying way too much. Still, it was fun.
Meanwhile, Halo Infinite will finally make its Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC debut on December 8, 2021.
