A post on Halo Waypoint today revealed news that in a year’s time a number of online services tied to the Xbox 360 versions of Halo games will be shut down, signalling an end of an era for Microsoft’s biggest franchise. The full details can be found here but the gist of it is online matchmaking will stop working for the 360 games as will a number of other services tied to managing multiplayer. Worth noting it looks like only competitive multiplayer is impacted here so those who enjoy the co-op modes will still be able to enjoy those with friends.

With Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) now being the ultimate place to go to experience the majority of these games it was inevitable that support for the legacy services would end. That it lasted as long as it did is amazing in itself. Think about it for a second… a whole new console generation came and went and these games were still fully up and running for the Xbox 360. Maybe it would have been different if MCC had delivered well back when it launched in 2014 (!) but that extra time to fix it has helped make MCC a far better product than it was ever intended to be and it’s hard to argue with this decision as result of that.

Still… playing Halo multiplayer on the 360 was a big part of my life for quite a few years and though I might be sad that I won’t be able to play those old games the same way anymore I do have a lot of happy memories and MCC keeps bringing me back for more.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is out now on Xbox and PC. The latest update brings Series X/S support to consoles, and platform crossplay too.