Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s Xbox team head delivered the sad news, that Microsoft has officially halted the manufacturing of the Xbox 360 gaming consoles, as of today. The Xbox 360 was the second console, in the Xbox series, and was launched as a competition to the Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii on November 5, 2005, in North America; the console turned 10 years old last November.
The near 11 year run of the Xbox 360 has seen many iterations over the past 10 years, with a recent successor, the Xbox One, launched in 2013. The Xbox 360 backward compatibility added to the Xbox One, seemed like a step to further strengthen the older platform, but we didn’t expect this news, just months after this feature update.
Phil Spencer in the official blogpost, expressed his gratitude to the gaming community and said,
The Xbox 360 helped redefine an entire generation of gaming at Microsoft. I am incredibly proud of all the work and dedication that went into the development of the Xbox hardware, services and games over the last decade. And I’m grateful to the fans for their continued passion and support.
The Xbox 360 was the birth-place of some of the most blockbuster games like Halo, and Gears of War, and also laid the foundation for the development of innovative products like the Kinect(which we use for research even today), Xbox Live, and much more. The console became an entertainment hub with some serious numbers to suggest the same, where over 78 billion gaming hours, 27 billion achievements, and over 25 billion hours spent in apps over it’s lifetime.
Phil bid the final goodbye and added,
It means a lot to everyone in Microsoft. And while we’ve had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product are starting to creep on us. Which is why we have made the decision to stop manufacturing new Xbox 360 consoles. We will continue to sell existing inventory of Xbox 360 consoles.
But wait, Microsoft is not totally abandoning the console, a lot of you are still using and enjoying the experience on their Xbox 360’s, so the company will continue to support the platform in multiple ways –
- Xbox 360 owners will continue to receive Xbox Live services for their console, such as online multiplayer gaming and parties, access to the apps they use today.
- Xbox Live servers that support Xbox 360 services will also remain online and active. Our Xbox 360 fans can continue to play their favorite games with the full support of Xbox Live.
- Gamers will also be able to continue to buy over 4,000 Xbox 360 games or Xbox 360 accessories at retail and through our Xbox 360 store online, while supplies last.
- Any Xbox 360 hardware will still be supported at xbox.com/support.
- And Xbox One owners will be able to continue to enjoy available Xbox 360 games through Xbox One Backward Compatibility – at no additional cost.
To read about the various iterations of the Xbox 360, head here.
To reminiscence the launching of the Xbox 360, watch the MTV launch video right here.
