News broke this week that will have some gamers upset. Gamers on the Xbox 360 will soon be losing out on Games With Gold. In an email sent to Xbox users, Microsoft confirmed that from October it will no longer include Xbox 360 titles in its monthly Games with Gold lineups. Gamers still have a few months left, but its clear that the age of the Xbox 360 is dead. And considering that Microsoft previously ended the support for 360 titles on Xbox One, this day was coming sooner rather than later.
“Beginning with October 1st, 2022, the monthly games Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Live Gold members receive through Games with Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 titles,” Microsoft said in an email which has been translated via Google. “We’ve reached the limit of our ability to add Xbox 360 games to the catalog. However, Games with Gold will continue to feature exciting Xbox One titles and exclusive savings each month.”
The move signals bad news for those not on the Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X train. So if you want to continue getting free games and new titles, you’re going to have to upgrade if you can. This obviously isn’t feasible for many gamers around the globe, but it’s just something that we’ll have to deal with going forward. The Xbox 360 has been around for nearly 20 years, and since its release on November 22, 2005, there’s been a lot of change in the console gaming market.
The news comes from prolific leaker Wario64. You can see their tweet below. “Starting in October, Xbox Games With Gold will no longer include Xbox 360 games (Microsoft has reached the limits to adding new X360 games to GWG).” they said. The news reveals that the company will continue to allow those who own GWG titles on 360 will still have access to them. So at the very least Xbox 360 owners will still have some access to their library. Any Xbox 360 games redeemed before October 2022 will not be affected by this closure of support.
The phasing out of console support is a pretty common thing as time rolls on. It was only a matter of time before the 360 finally hit the end of its life. The console had previously stopped production in 2016, leading to a fewer number of consoles online over time. In that 11-year timespan, gamers had played more than 70 billion hours. During its lifespan, Microsoft released multiple models for the console, including support for the much-maligned Kinect. It’s worth noting that the Xbox One also ceased production this year, so it will likely be true that the Xbox One users deal with this issue sometime in the future.
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