Xbox 360 Marketplace is Closed for Business

As of July 29th, 2024, the Xbox 360’s online marketplace cannot be utilized for new purchases anymore. Now two console generations behind and with competent backwards compatibility, Microsoft decided it was time to pull the plug on the system that made up a lot of our childhoods/early adulthoods. You can no longer explore the marketplace to buy new games, downloadable content, or even items for your avatar – all you can do is redownload previously purchased items to your system that are associated with your Xbox Live account. The end of an era is an understatement, as a multitude of digital-only pieces of content are now at risk of being lost media.

While many of the titles on the Xbox 360 Marketplace’s catalog are backwards compatible and still purchasable in the following generations’ stores, there are many items that cannot be acquired anymore. This includes noteworthy digital-only Arcade exclusives like The Dishwasher and South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play. Tack on a lot of downloadable content and expansions that aren’t even available on Steam, and the very real risk of losing these pieces of content to time is evident. I jumped to download the rareware American Mcgee’s Alice and all pieces of Asura’s Wrath‘s DLC to finish its incomplete story, as I didn’t want those to fall by the wayside.

Not only are all of the games and DLC’s escaping purchase on the Xbox 360 Marketplace, but all the digital freebies on offer were, too. This includes downloadable videos like the infamous Halo 3 diorama advertisement, the Meet the Sniper short, and the Dead Space 2 commercial where moms reacted to the game’s gratuitous violence. A huge blow to media conservation, this is finally it for what many consider to be the best console ever created, as physical media will now make a jump in price and create an unnecessary scarcity.