No more Live for original Xbox games @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on February 05, 2010

News: The online service will be discontinued on April 15.

Microsoft has announced that they will be discontinung online play over the Xbox Live service for the original Xbox system (and Xbox games played on an Xbox 360 through backwards compatibility) on April 15, 2010.

And yes, that applies to Halo 2 as well. Xbox Live General Manager Mark Whitten had this to say about the game's affect on the growth of the online service:

"There's no greater example of the power of the Xbox Live community than the Halo franchise. Halo 2 has had an amazing run on Live, with a dedicated community more than five years after launch and well into the next generation of consoles. It has fundamentally changed the way we play video games. And while it's difficult to see that run come to an end, the Halo franchise continues to act as the benchmark for multiplayer gaming in this generation, with Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and soon Halo: Reach on Xbox 360."

Whitten continues by saying that Microsoft did not come to this decision lightly, but the discontinuation of the Live service for Xbox gamers was required due to the improvements the company wants to make to the service: "To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games."

In the past, Microsoft has talked about wanting to expand the number of Friends each Xbox Live user can have (the current cap is 100), but that they couldn't because the code in some original Xbox games wouldn't let them.

While Whitten did not say if a cap increase is in the cards, he did say that changes will be coming this year and that he believes "we'll look back on 2010 as a landmark year in gaming and home entertainment."

We'll have more soon.