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Microsoft Stops Xbox 360 Production, Servers To Stay Online
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has stopped manufacturing new Xbox 360 consoles. "Xbox 360 means a lot to everyone in Microsoft," wrote Phil Spencer, Xbox chief. "And while we've had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us." The company says that it will, obviously, continue to sell the existing inventory of Xbox 360, a gaming console it launched on November 22, 2005. Xbox 360 game servers will also remain functional, the company said. Microsoft also assured that services such as Games with Gold and Deals with Gold will continue on Xbox 360, and if your console runs into a hardware issue, Xbox Support will take care of it. The Xbox 360 is currently available for purchase at $199.99, for a 500GB model with a copy of Forza Horizon 2. Microsoft added Xbox 360 backward compatibility to its current generation Xbox One console last year.
The $200 price tag, mostly. In the past it was a good idea to wait until around now in the product cycle to pick up a console, when it's cheap and the market is flooded with used games that were dumped in favor of the new generation. Of course, with online play being important to so many games now, it's not as good of a deal as it used to be. Even if the servers are still up and you can play online with a used copy, the communities will be mostly dead.
Microsoft Stops Xbox 360 Production, Servers To Stay Online FOR NOW