For many in the fighting game community, the Xbox 360 served as the genre’s home as it moved into the online era, but that house is about to shut its doors for good.
Microsoft is now hours away from closing down the Xbox 360 Marketplace, which means a bunch of classic / fan favorite fighting games are essentially going to disappear unless you pick them up now.
It’s important to note that before we begin, backwards compatible games will still be available to purchase on the newer consoles, however, that still leaves a bunch of titles that aren’t on the verge of becoming inaccessible.
This includes the likes of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition, Darkstalkers Resurrection, Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, Street Fighter X Tekken and more that are heavily discounted in these final days that we’ll detail more in a minute.
Starting July 29, 2024, users will no longer be able to purchase new games or downloadable content from the Xbox 360 Marketplace similarly to the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS’ previous shutdown.
There’s still no official end time yet, so your safest bet is to make any purchases before 11:59 p.m. PT tonight, July 28.
As such, titles that are not backwards compatible with the Xbox One / Series X|S will become unavailable including some very important titles for the FGC as mentioned above.
To make the sting hurt a little less, many of these games are being heavily discounted 75–90% off until the store goes down, so there’s still a bit of time to jump on them for dirt cheap.
Now while the store itself is shutting down, the 360’s servers will remain online for the foreseeable future at least too.
This means players will still be able to download and re-download all of their purchased content and play them online unless specifically stated otherwise.
It’s wild to think the Xbox 360 store is almost 19 years old after launching in 2005 with the console, but it’s just as crazy how many games are going to now essentially be trapped on that system and only for those who already own them.
After tomorrow, the only way to legally access Third Strike Online Edition or Darkstalkers Resurrection as a new player would be through the PlayStation 3 or through PlayStation Plus’ streaming service on newer consoles since they aren’t on PC either for the most part.
And that former option will presumably go away at some point too when Sony decides to shutter the PS3 store as the only one of its era that’s still operational for now.
Quite a few can still technically be accessed through more modern means like the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary and Capcom Fighting Collection, but those versions of say 3S Online Edition were unique with different content and features compared to their arcade counterparts.
We’re witnessing the end of an era that was very important to building the fighting game community to where it is today in a time before rollback netcode was the norm and you could hear your opponent raging over voice chat by default.
Xbox put together a list of discounted 360 games that can still be picked up before the store closes, so we’ve put together the available fighting games below.
If something isn’t included here, it means the title is either already backwards compatible, isn’t on sale or has already been delisted from the store previously like Soul Calibur 2 HD and 5.
It appears, however, that the old Xbox Marketplace website is already starting to break, so you may have to try links multiple times before they may load if trying to purchase online.
• Darkstalkers Resurrection – $1.50
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection – $5
• Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition – $1.50
• Street Fighter 2 HF – $1
• Street Fighter X Tekken – $2
• Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix – $1.50
• Yie Ar Kung-Fu – $2.50