The Corner Penthouse

If you're a retro gamer like me, and you've not already heard, Microsoft will close the Xbox 360 Marketplace (store) on July 29, 2024. After that date, you will not be able to buy any games or DLC from marketplace.xbox.com or through a Xbox 360 console. While most games will be lost, a small handful have been archived.

Before I get to the free full games, it needs to be said that if there is a digital-only game you wish to purchase, NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY IT. Many games have just been drastically reduced in price, with Burnout Crash! as low as A MERE $0.49. These price reductions will remain until the store closes on July 29th. (A final round of price reductions will occur on July 16th - a mere 13 days before the closure.)

Bear in mind that the Xbox 360 Marketplace is quite broken. The Marketplace website isn't connected properly to the Microsoft Account website/system, so (in my experience) the Marketplace website can't see any payment methods you have in your Microsoft Account. That includes any Microsoft Account Balance you may have from using Xbox Gift Cards! Conversely, if you try to enter a 25-digital Xbox Gift Card code through the Xbox 360 console, you may get an "invalid code" error message.

To avoid giving Microsoft my bank card information (the broken Marketplace site no longer accepts PayPal), and also avoid triggering any of my bank's security features by having several dozen card transactions in a single day (since every item has to be purchased individually), I have opted to buy Xbox Gift Cards using cash in CVS, Walgreens, etc. Specifically, I find the $10-$250 variable amount cards to be the best since I can put whatever amount I need on it. Once I have the card, I type in the 25-digital code on the Microsoft Account website. That will add the amount to my balance (seen on the previously-linked Payment Methods page). I then have to find the games I want to buy through the interface on my Xbox 360 console and buy it using the balance there. Such a pain in the ass, but one I only have to deal with for the next 40 days.

Once the Xbox 360 Marketplace closes on July 29th, most of its content will be gone forever. Anything you previously purchased can be re-downloaded through the Download History section on your Xbox 360 console (in Settings, then Account), but if you never bought it before, you won't have the chance to anymore. I have seen that some folks have made efforts to save as much of it as possible, but most of that content is DRM-locked and can't be used unless you have a hacked console. Gamers with off-the-shelf systems won't be able to play any of it. That said, there are FOUR free full games that do not have any DRM, so they can be played forever.

The folks at Digiex have saved the games Aegis Wing, Dash of Destruction, Hexic HD, and Yaris. They have combined them into a 226MB ISO file (rar mirror). Burn this ISO to a CD-R or DVD-R, as one normally would. (Search online if you don't know how to do that.) Insert the burned disc into your Xbox 360, and it will say "Mixed Media Disc" on the square you would normally use to play a game. Just go to the Games tab, and then into My Games, and make sure that "All Games" is showing. You will be able to launch any of the four games from here.

TotemBall is also included, but it won't show up because it is console-locked, so I have to wonder why the folks at Digiex who put this ISO together included it in the first place. Also, TotemBall requires a Xbox Live Vision Camera in order to play it. Until July 29th, TotemBall can still be downloaded for free from Microsoft. Aegis Wing and Hexic HD are, also, still available to download from Microsoft until the store closure. Dash of Destruction (a Doritos promo) and Yaris (a Toyota promo) were delisted years ago, so the only way to play them is to download the ISO file.

I was a late player to the Xbox 360. I bought a used console for $40 at a flea market in September 2015. I wasn't an early adopter of the PlayStation 3, either, having bought it in late 2011. Both systems have their positives and their negatives, but overall, I have enjoyed each of them. Sony, fundamentally, closed the PlayStation 3 store back in 2021. It was only a matter of time that Microsoft would do the same for the Xbox 360. From what I've read, it has been around for 18 years, so it's not like it hasn't lived a full life :-)