The end of an era is approaching as 343 Industries has announced that it will start sunsetting all Halo Xbox 360 legacy services in order to fully commit to the future of the Halo franchise – with Halo Infinite and Halo: The Master Chief Collection at the forefront. This is actually common practice as maintaining servers – especially those from two console generations ago – requires a lot of extra time and effort from the development team in order to keep them up and running; time which could be spent on newer projects.
Participation in Xbox 360 matchmaking has decreased significantly as have digital and physical sales which were halted back in 2018 with DLC still available to download at no additional cost. The fact that 343 Industries has continued to support Xbox 360 until now is very admirable considering the average lifespan of an online service is between 2-5 years after the launch of a new console.
Sunsetting of the Halo Xbox 360 legacy servers will be carried out in Four Phases with the final phase occurring in December 2021 at which time all online play for those titles will no longer be possible; with some exceptions. The shutdown will not affect areas such as campaigns, firefights, and Spartan Ops – these modes will remain indefinitely for players to enjoy, however certain services that require online connectivity will be limited or disabled entirely.
Sunsetting Phase Breakdown
- Phase One – initiated back in 2019 and consisted of a one-time migration of over 6 million pieces of Halo Xbox 360 Legacy UGC (user generated content) data over to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection servers
- Phase Two – currently underway with players being notified of the impending shutdown and all digital and physical games no longer available to purchase from retailers
- Phase Three – no major changes; 343 Industries will continue to remind players throughout the year of the impending shutdown through all existing Halo channels and social media networks
- Phase Four – servers will be shutdown
Though this announcement might seem bittersweet for some players, the future is looking very bright for Halo fans and 343 Industries is very excited about all of the opportunities that lie ahead.