The Xbox 360 Marketplace closed on July 29, 2024. Discs work exactly as before. What you can’t do anymore is buy add-on episodes, expansions and downloadable games for the console, so a used disc sometimes comes without the extras that were sold separately.
What was sold on the Xbox 360 Marketplace?
Add-on content such as costumes, items and extra levels, plus Xbox Live Arcade games, themes, demos and trailers. Wikipedia estimates that around 70 percent of Xbox Live users downloaded something from it. Xbox Live Arcade, the part that sold small downloadable games, first launched on November 3, 2004, and was re-launched on November 22, 2005 alongside the Xbox 360, built into the dashboard.
What happens to a game I bought on disc?
It plays the same as it always did. The difference is the extras. If you bought an add-on before the closure, you can still download it again. If you didn’t, you can’t get it now.
Alan Wake is an example from our own game records. Its two extra episodes, The Signal and The Writer, came out in 2010 and were sold on the store, so they’re only there for people who bought them before July 2024. Microsoft gave the date in an Xbox Wire post from August 2023.
What should I check when I buy a used 360 game?
- Whether the extra content is on the disc or was sold separately. Anything sold separately can’t be bought by a new owner.
- Whether it’s a “Game of the Year” or “Complete” edition. Those usually include the extras on the disc, but check the box rather than assume.
- Whether it needs an online connection at all. A lot of 360 games work offline, and our game pages say what still works online.
We haven’t checked every game, so we can’t say how many are affected. If you’ve hit one that you couldn’t finish because the extras are gone, tell us which. You can start from the Xbox 360 page.
Sources: Wikipedia, Xbox 360 (CC BY-SA 4.0) and the Xbox Wire post linked above.
Header image: Xbox 360 Chatpad+controller.png by Alphathon (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons.
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