Microsoft announces plan to shut down online for Halo titles on the Xbox 360 by next year

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You have about a year left to experience the online services for seven Halo titles, if you're still playing them on the Xbox 360, or through backwards compatibility. 343 has announced that after many years, and an ever-dwindling playerbase, it's time to "sunset" the servers for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo Wars, Spartan Assault, Halo: ODST, Halo 3, Halo 4, and Halo: Reach. By December 2021, anything involving online will no longer work, which means online matchmaking won't work, certain achievements will no longer be obtainable, filesharing, and other smaller features will be gone for good. Obviously, the singleplayer campaigns of each of the games will still be fully playable offline. This sunsetting also applies to the lineup, even if you're playing them on the Xbox One, or the Xbox Series X|S. Digital copies of all of these games have also been delisted, following the announcement. For those still interested in playing these games online, there's always The Master Chief Collection, or Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, which will both continue to be supported for a long time to come.

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RyRyIV

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Much like Thanos, this was inevitable. And yet I’m still sad about it. I can’t count how many hours I’ve spent in Halo 3’s matchmaking specifically. That game was a huge part of my childhood, and even though I haven’t touched it in years it’s still bittersweet to know it has an expiration date.

Might be time to pop in for one last hoorah. I’m reminded of the huge surge of activity the Halo 2 servers experienced before they shut down. It’d be cool to see Halo 3 get the same treatment.
 

The Catboy

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Well, time to force my boyfriend to teach me how to git gud in Halo, purely so I can get those online achievements before they're gone for good :rofl2:
This is a mood but with my wife, lol. @FatalAryia is obsessed with Halo, she literally once woke me up just to talk about Halo
 

Tom Bombadildo

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Huh, TBH I kind of thought they already did that :lol: I wonder how many people are actually still playing the 360 versions these days, I imagine now that the MCC is complete on PC and has been updated to hell and back on Xboner to make it good it can't be that many these days.
 

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I don't understand, i will not play online Halo 4 bought standalone, but i will play online Halo 4 inside the MasterChief?
And i never have understood how the Xbox Live Gold works.. i mean, is not more easy to have some general servers that can load specific game server app/program..only in the moment the user will launch that game?
 

godreborn

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you might be able to load the game online with xlink kai. that's what jtag.rgh normally do. in fact, I know it's at least part of FSD2. if you sign in with a jtag/rgh, you'll be banned within 5 hours, which I think is the longest recorded without a ban.

I've never really played with xbox gold, but I think there's silver as well. I was able to sign in without an account with gears of war, and I died almost instantly having never played the game. lol
 
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Tom Bombadildo

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I don't understand, i will not play online Halo 4 bought standalone, but i will play online Halo 4 inside the MasterChief?
And i never have understood how the Xbox Live Gold works.. i mean, is not more easy to have some general servers that can load specific game server app/program..only in the moment the user will launch that game?
Games in the MCC were rebuilt/remastered to work with modern consoles and modern servers, they don't share the same servers as the original XBOX/360 games.
 
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Phudou

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Games in the MCC were rebuilt/remastered to work with modern consoles and modern servers, they don't share the same servers as the original XBOX/360 games.
Yes i was reading the source of the news just now, but still i rest a bit stucked, we are speaking of 343, a Microsoft studio that if i remember well has part of Bungie programmers, really is so difficult to create a serverside program to manage all?
To me, seems only another way to spill money (ok that doesn't involve me 'cause already have every Halo but.. boh i didn't liked the move)
 

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Welp, it's time to start transitioning to unofficial servers! If Xbox 360 games are capable of being hacked to use them, that is. I know that with the Wii, there's Wiimmfi, which gives unofficial network capability to certain Wii titles via homebrew, but as for Xbox 360, I wouldn't know. I assume that is the case.
 

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Yes i was reading the source of the news just now, but still i rest a bit stucked, we are speaking of 343, a Microsoft studio that if i remember well has part of Bungie programmers, really is so difficult to create a serverside program to manage all?
To me, seems only another way to spill money (ok that doesn't involve me 'cause already have every Halo but.. boh i didn't liked the move)
It doesn't make financial sense to allocate server usage for games that have no online community. Presumably the vast majority of people who might've played any of these titles moved on to the MCC already, given that the 360 is now 2 generations old, keeping server resources allocated for the 200 people or whatever that might still play them makes no sense when there are newer and bigger games that would better use those resources.
 

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Hells Malice

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Makes sense. It's honestly just time to move to MCC now that it finally functions. There's no real reason not to. Only Halo 4 really had any sort of cosmetic progression. Kinda wish MCC kept that but oh well.

Well, time to force my boyfriend to teach me how to git gud in Halo, purely so I can get those online achievements before they're gone for good :rofl2:

Speed run strats it is
 
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raxadian

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I am amazed they keep support for so long. Then again 54% of Xbox 360s broke down until the latest revision so... I guess it was some sort of apology?
 

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We need some sort of preservation law to stop things like this from happening, I'm not a Halo guy but the 360 players that are should be able to play it without modifications 10 years from now.

We need to make it clear the 3ds online is not to be shut down
 
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