If you stay perfectly still, you can hear the sound of thousands of hardcore Halo 2 players screaming "Nooooooooooooo!" simultaneously.

Well, good for them. Guess we'll see what they have planned at E3.

I bet this is one of the steps they needed for expanding the LIVE Friends lists. Didnt they once discuss legacy issues with XBOX 1 games, though they named Halo 1 or 2 specifically as the example?

I'd be interested in how many people are still subscribe to Live on the Original XBox and what percentage of those are people who still use it as opposed to those who just haven't bothered to cancel their subscription like a lot of people seem to do with World of Warcraft.

I hope you're right, skeletonframes. Otherwise I'm not entirely sure why they'd have to discontinue it for games played on the 360.

Just watch, they'll ax XBox1 service, patch X360 Live, and we'll get nothing but a bunch of new paid avatar content.

Lots of people still play HALO 2. Lots.

An olive branch would be a 360 adapted copy of Halo 2, free or severely reduced for Gold Subscribers.

This is from Jan 25th via major Nelson:

Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 2
2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
3 Counter-Strike
4 Splinter Cell Chaos
5 Fable
6 Conker: Live Reloaded
7 Star Wars: Battlefront
8 Doom 3
9 SW: KOTOR
10 SW: Republic Commando

Ok, in all honesty, who the heck is playing Doom 3 online!? I actually had that game at one point a month after it came out years ago and there were a whopping 2 people playing online. Is there a secret cult following of people out there who can't even tape a flashlight to their shotguns?

Wish I had these games so I could jump in and see how "lively" they actually are during prime time.

It's not just multiplayer. I think it's that they are logged into Live when they are playing. (ME2 is on the Xbox 360 list)

But yeah, I don't think there's a ton of single player Doom 3 going on, either. So you're probably right.

Another plus side to this - That gamertag you've always wanted may become available if that person doesn't have a 360 to re-up their LIVE service.

Halo 2 is consistently the number 1 most played Xbox Original game and according to Bungie.net, it has logged approx. 3600 unique user playing an average of 1.8 games each within the last 24 hours. Overall I am surprised it has taken this long for the support to be cut in favour of expanding the commonly requested dashboard features of the 25million+ Xbox 360 users (larger friends lists, integrated clan support).

With X10 scheduled next week, I suspect we will hear some interesting additions to the Live experience being announced (although I suspect they will not be ready to launch before April ).

Remember though, Doom 3 on the original xbox had an coop campaign over Live. Maybe folks are still enjoying that together as opposed to DM.

Or were.

I have two original xbox's... it kinda brings a tear to my eye to think that another chapter in their lives is winding to an end. Then again, they are a bit neglected these days.

I think this is a very sad and short-sighted, if business-inevitable, development. I'm thinking specifically of Lara Crigger's article in GameSpy last week about NCHEG and the discussion on the GWJCC about video game preservation. Halo multiplayer is, like it or not, a huge part of video game history, and to have that experience eliminated without a vision that is both forwards- and backwards-looking is unfortunate—to say nothing of every other original Xbox Live game out there. I don't know what the technological requirements or financial costs are of making a system that can move forward without leaving anything behind, but I'm not an engineer or an executive so I don't have to. I'm a quixotic library worker and anthropology grad so what I do know is that here is another case of our past being willfully forgotten, right in front of our eyes.

I'll reiterate that I don't see why this must mean forgetting the past. The video game industry has no pride whatsoever in its history. Maybe in paying lip service to it, but certainly not in keeping it alive or accessible.

But it's not Microsoft's job to run a museum. It's their job to serve their customers, thereby making a profit for their shareholders. Corporations need to be forward looking, and I applaud them for doing that. It is, as you say, business-inevitable, but you can't ignore that in light of the (admittedly admirable) goal of documenting the history of the industry.

It could also be argued that Halo multiplayer is anything but forgotten. Haloes 3, ODST and Reach are carrying the torch forward, there's potentially terabytes of Youtube footage, articles and news stories on the series out there in internetland.

Keep an eye on the info for the new Splinter Cell game! It looks like it at least takes some multiplayer cues from Chaos Theory.

While I do feel a bit sorry for the dedicated Halo 2 players, I can't say that I fault Microsoft for this decision. They currently have tens or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people who cannot be allowed to access more advanced features due to a few thousand people playing a handful of legacy games.

This is a business we're talking about, and a publicly traded one at that. They have an obligation to do their best to generate revenue and increase their user base. While preservation of old games is a nice concept, it's really not something Microsoft is obligated to do any more than Wendy's is obligated to keep around the menu item that doesn't generate sales because nobody orders it anymore.