At the end of 2020, 343 Industries revealed that it was planning to shut down the servers for numerous Halo titles that were released throughout the Xbox 360 era. These games primarily included Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4. And while the plan was to officially close the servers later this year in December 2021, 343 has today announced that the real shut down date won’t occur until early next year.
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Divulged on the official Halo website today, 343 announced that it will be sunsetting a majority of online services for various Halo titles on Xbox 360 next year on January 13, 2022. “Every cycle spent maintaining and supporting Xbox 360 legacy services is time and energy not spent on the future of Halo. To that end – today we are announcing our intention to sunset our Halo Xbox 360 legacy services to fully focus on the future of the franchise. On January 13, 2022, online services for legacy Halo Xbox 360 titles will be discontinued,” 343 said in its updated blog post today. “Owners of these titles will still be able to play these games indefinitely, however, certain online features and experiences, particularly online matchmaking, will be limited or disabled.”
If you’re confused about why this is happening in the first place, 343 previously explained that the player numbers for Halo games on Xbox 360 have continued to shrink quite a bit over the years. As such, for the studio to continue to pour resources into keeping online components alive for these titles no longer made sense, especially when those same resources could be put into a project such as Halo Infinite or Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
Speaking more to Halo: The Master Chief Collection, this remastered bundle is also the primary reason why 343 feels comfortable shutting down services on Xbox 360 to begin with. All of the aforementioned Halo games that first released on Xbox 360 are now available to those on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC platforms via The Master Chief Collection. So while online services for these games will be dying on their original platform of release, they’re still going to be readily playable elsewhere.
How do you feel about seeing these online services come to an end for various Halo games on Xbox 360? Let me know your reaction either down in the comments or on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
