After nearly 17 years in service, Microsoft has announced that Halo Xbox 360 servers have been discontinued, affecting several Halo games on the console. While the affected games will still be playable for the time being, matchmaking and several other online components have been taken down forever.
- Related Reading: Xbox One Consoles Discontinued Officially by Microsoft
As of the official blog post, here are the games affected on the Halo Xbox 360 servers closure:
- Halo: Reach
- Halo 4
- Halo 3
- Halo 3: ODST
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
- Spartan Assault
- Halo Wars
Microsoft also revealed the features that will still be available for the games listed:
- Halo: Reach – Campaign, Firefight, Custom games, Forge, Splitscreen, Local Area Networking (LAN), Online squads, support will vary for Achievements
- Halo 4 – Campaign, Spartan ops, Custom games, Forge, Splitscreen, LAN, Online squads, support will vary for Achievements.
- Halo 3 – Campaign, Custom games, Forge, Splitscreen, LAN, Online squads, Service record, Player customization, support will vary for Achievements.
- Halo 3: ODST – Campaign, Firefight, Splitscreen, LAN, Online squads, Service record, and Player customization.
- Halo: CE Anniversary – Campaign, Splitscreen and LAN
- Halo: Spartan Assault – Campaign, Online Squads, and Matchmaking
- Halo Wars – Campaign, Online Squads, and Matchmaking
Essentially, all of the mainline Halo titles will no longer be playable in online competitive modes, although some custom games can still be played. To find out all the details on the closure of the servers, check out the full blog here.
In case you missed it, 343 recently posted a blog on Halo Infinite and the measures the studio are taking to address the issues within Big Team Battle mode, and you can read more on that here.
Check out our review for Halo Infinite here, where AJ wrote, “All in all, Halo Infinite is a worthy entry to this legendary franchise. That is an achievement by itself. But what I really appreciated is the fact that 343 took risks. These risks are things that could have completely soured the experience and turned away even the most diehard fans of the franchise. In the end though, those risks paid off. Infinite is in my opinion, 343’s best Halo title yet, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where it goes from here.”