Game archivists lament end of the Xbox 360 Marketplace

It's been almost 19 years since the Xbox 360 launched, which depending on your perspective might make it a retro console or make you a retro person—I for one had a lot more hair back then. Among the most notable features of the console, which launched a couple years after Steam, was its online game store where full games could be purchased and downloaded. That store is finally being retired.

«On July 29, 2024, Xbox will stop supporting the ability to purchase new games, DLC, and other entertainment content from the Xbox 360 Store on the console and the Xbox 360 Marketplace,» Microsoft announced last year, and now the day has come.

The shutdown only affects the ability to purchase games and DLC for the Xbox 360. Games that are already owned will continue to work, and there are also many backwards-compatible Xbox 360 games available to buy on newer Xboxes, so it's not a total wipeout of a generation of digitally-distributed console games. (Many Xbox 360 games also ended up on PC.)

The closure, while obviously not directly relevant to PC gamers, has activated long-standing anxieties over DRM, digital distribution, and game preservation. «Today the Xbox 360 Marketplace shuts down for good, taking hundreds of games and DLC off the market, with no legal way to access them,» wrote the Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving games and their source material. (They also made a cake.)

Closures of games stores and services—like Stadia, for example—always get me thinking about the real doomsday scenario: What if Steam went away? How many games would be unobtainable forever? It's almost unimaginable—unlike the decrepit Xbox 360 store, Steam is supremely relevant today and keeps Gabe Newell's yachts running—but it could, in theory, happen.

Today the Xbox 360 Marketplace shuts down for good, taking hundreds of games and DLC off the market, with no legal way to access them. We're working to fix copyright law for game preservation, but for now, we figured a