As already widely communicated by Microsoft, today, July 29, 2024is the date set for the Xbox 360 Digital Store Closing which will also bring with it the actual deletion of some gamesbut this is still active at the moment, allowing a few more hours for any last-minute purchases.
There is no precise Italian time when the definitive disconnection will take place, but at the moment the store seems to be still active, as you can see by consulting the web version at this address. As long as this one remains online, it means that it is still possible to make last-minute purchases before the total shutdown, which should in any case take place during the day, perhaps in the early afternoon (perhaps around 3:00 PM Italian time, corresponding to 9:00 AM ET).
The initiative has been announced by Microsoft for a long time now and, in recent weeks, there have also been numerous discounts on Xbox 360 games, which should have given enough time to collect all the titles considered to be of “historical” interest.
Only digital games that are not backwards compatible will be lost
Please remember that this closure does not necessarily mean the loss of all Xbox 360 games, but only a portion of them.
Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S are backwards compatible with many Xbox 360 titles, and these will continue to be purchasable and playable on most modern consoles.
The closure of the Xbox 360 digital store has, as its main consequence, the impossibility of accessing those games that are not part of the backwards compatibility program and that perhaps are no longer available in physical format, or that have never had a physical version.
In this regard, you can consult a list of titles that could actually disappear due to the closure of the online store in question at this address (Google Sheets document).
This is an initiative that seems to be inevitable in the long run, but which demonstrates once again that there is an effective problem in the possibility of preserving the software if this remains tied to a particular ecosystem, which pushes us to think about possible more open and ethical solutions for the conservation of these products over time.
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