- The Xbox 360 Store is shutting
down for good on July 29th. So this feels like the perfect opportunity to take a look at what it's
like to use the 360 in 2024. Download and buy some games
that are heavily discounted before the store shuts down. And just talk a little bit about
the legacy of the Xbox 360. In my opinion, by far the
best Xbox of all time. Now if you're unfamiliar, this was a quick sequel
to the original Xbox. Microsoft famously lost piles of money selling that original Xbox. And so they were heavily incentivized to bring out the successor. And boy, oh, boy, did they. The 360 launched a year before
both the PS3 and the Wii, and it brought HD gaming to the masses. We had HDMI that came a little bit later, but you had the ability
to do 720, even 1080. And the thing was this had a
lot of things going for it. This was really the generation where online gaming actually took over. Now, yes, Xbox Live did
exist on the original Xbox. You also could do some online gaming and like the Dreamcast, the PS2. But it wasn't until the
Xbox 360, that online gaming as we know it today, was really solidified
in the console space. I will say though, the
original 360 was heavily flawed when it came to the Red Ring of Death. These consoles, especially
the first year or two of production, they failed
at an astronomical rate, and it really kind of dented the momentum. And Microsoft lost again, piles of money extending people's warranties
and offering replacements. I had one of these original Xbox 360s and it red ringed within a month. And when I take it to fix it,
they just did the towel trick. And I took it back again and
they did the towel trick again. And then I gave up and I was really sad. So I think it's safe to say
that the 360 had a little bit of an up and down
lifecycle at the beginning. Fast forward to 2010 and we got
ourselves the Xbox 360 slim. This is a pretty major upgrade. Now it did lose a couple of
things from the original Xbox, so you no longer had the ability to easily swap out the hard drives. As well as the original 360 had, what I would say is a
very cool sort of gimmick where you had replaceable face plates. The main advantages with
the slim were the fact that it had Wifi built in. So the problem is all of
these original white Xbox's, they did not have Wifi. You had to buy, I think it
was like $100 Wifi dongle, which even by the time 2005,
'6, '7, '8 rolled around was a very major flaw. While you still could have
some issues with them, they were far, far less prone to failure than especially the early 360. And they also improved
things by making sure that HDMI was standard. You had yourself the Kinect port, which was a huge, huge
deal for the Xbox 360. You know, it was sort of
Microsoft's answer to the Wii. And by the time the Xbox 360 E came out, well, it was the end of the generation because
this came out in 2013 at the exact same press conference as they announced the Xbox One. Now the 360 E was pretty
much just a slightly cheaper version of the Slim. So it was a little bit more
of a straightforward design. It lost a couple of things
such as the component output. But the main thing was they
were able to sell this thing for dirt cheap. And this
is at a time, mind you, where the competition was the Xbox One, which had mandatory Kinect
and it was a $500 console. So a lot of people
actually did still buy 360 as well into the Xbox One lifecycle. And they also bought PS4's. And Wii U's. So let's put our Xbox's online, and see what it's like to
not only use the store right before they shut it down, but also to see how well
the 360 holds up today. Because unlike a lot of older consoles, a lot of these games are
actually very easily able to be played on newer Xbox's. And in some cases you can run
it on like a One X or Series X at much higher resolutions
than this guy ever could. So is it even worth it to
mourn the loss of our buddy, the Xbox 360? Well, let's go fire it up, shall we? All righty, let's log into Xbox Live. This is the dude that I made in...2009? Yes, I've owned an Xbox for over a decade and I only have 11,000 gamerscore. (all laugh)
(exciting upbeat music) So let me quickly explain
what's actually happening on July 29th. The game store as well as the marketplace with like the movies and TVs and stuff, all of this will be shut down. So you'll still be able to download games that you've already previously purchased. You'll also still be able to
play online with Xbox Live. I will say a big reason why you may want to actually buy a game
is that first of all, they're really cheap. So a ton of Xbox 360 games
are massively discounted before they shut the store down. But also as the store gets
shut down, what you're gonna find is that a lot of physical
games are probably gonna start going up in value. Not all of them. But if you
look at something like the 3DS, when they shut that down, a lot of those games immediately elevated because there's no easy way to get them. Let's look through the
games that we can purchase for the Xbox 360. So let's do "Dead Island Riptide." So this is 74 cents. Also, do you remember when a whole ass game was only 3 gigabytes? Now I'm
gonna buy a bunch of games, but I'm gonna download them off camera, mostly because I don't
wanna be here all day. So, well, let's see.
"Resident Evil: Revelations." I remember playing this
on the 3DS, actually. A $1,99, there we go. "Lego Star Wars: the Force Awakens." 4.99. Yeah, we're playing that. I'm doing this video
partially as just a fun, you know, excuse to go
back through memory lane, but honestly, if you still have a 360, it is actually really
worth it to dust it off, and to buy some of these
old games while you can. What's "H andball?" - [Ken] Like the sport? - [Alex] Yeah, the European Sport. - Handball.
- Oh, my God. - "Black Ops III". I'm gonna bet that this
one's not discounted. Anyone wanna take a bet that
this one's not discounted? Yep, $50. I knew it. "WRC,"
- [Ken] Oh, rally. - Sure. It's cheap. Three bucks? (device dings)
Yeah, "Far Cry 4." All right, "Far Cry 4."
Four was actually decent. 5.99, that's not bad. Ooh, ooh, $20. All right, can I share
something with the gang? I used to have a side channel
where I did a let's play of a few different games,
including "Far Cry 2." If you know what's up, you can find it. It's still up, it's still live. This actually gives me an
option to play on Xbox One. Wait, what does that mean? What does it do when I hit Xbox One? - [Ken] It probably
loads it on the Xbox One. - Oh, it actually tells you the
games that work on Xbox One. Oh, that's kind of cool. This game was so far ahead of this time. I'm getting excited. Let's see, what games are most popular? "Mirror's Edge!" - Ooh!
- Let's go! (screams) 15 bucks, ooh. (all laugh)
Let's go. - [Ken] Dude, it was 15 bucks, like three years after it came out. - Yeah. $4 for "Skyrim." - [Joanna] I knew it.
- [Ken] Wow. Well, it's Bethesda like they. - It's the worst version of Skyrim. "Shadow of Mordor." I cannot believe "Shadow of
Mordor" shipped on the 360. Like that was such a legit game. What's it like to use Internet Explorer? Does Internet Explorer
actually work at all? It's Binging it within Internet Explorer. Oh, my God, it's working. It's a little broken looking. Someone know how to spell mercenaries? M-E-R-C-E-N-A. Mercanacanies. (all laugh) (device dings) What? Wait, after all that, now I
need to update my console. What?
- [Alex] But we checked for an update.
- It didn't even. Oh, I like how it didn't
ask if I wanted to update. It just started updating. (laughs) It's like, hey, you need an update and I'm downloading it right now. So how about this? Let me gather together a selection of these high-quality titles, entertainment and fun
delightful activities. And let's give the 360 a final rip before it all comes falling down. And so with our bountiful
harvest of games downloaded to the 360, let's
start out with "Far Cry 2." So "Far Cry 2" is a very different game than the later "Far Cry." I think "Far Cry 3" is when they started getting weird and wacky. "Far Cry 2" is actually
like a pretty like sober kind of game. Not to spoil it, the end is like not good. So "Far Cry 2" did a lot of things. It had an actual fire
system where like the grass and whatnot could be
sort of caught on fire. And there's an entire map editor. So I'm gonna go ahead and start with the Wilderness Generator. Look how cool this is.
Isn't this just like neat? Oh, well, I fell down that erosion. I don't know, I eroded too hard. But I still think this game looks good, but this game still looks really good. - [Character] We drink beer. - We drink beer. Just boys letting off steam. Don't worry about it. It's
totally fine, you know? I did that all the time when I was a kid. Just lighting. - [Joanna] Arson. (chuckles) - Yeah, yeah, a little casual
arson never hurt anybody. - Well, you know.
- Real, real dark. Is there a door around here somewhere? I'll say the frame rate's a lot choppier than I remember it being. Ah, frame rate, no. Oh, God. Before I ruin my
memories of "Far Cry 2." What a lovely game that I've got here that you can actually buy on PC. I think still that runs a lot better, but ah, well, this, this looks great. Let's play "WRC 5." Now this is one of those
very late Xbox 360 games that came out I believe in 2015. So this is a couple years
into the Xbox Ones lifecycle. This is all right. I will say some other late Xbox 360 games probably looked a little bit better. I always think about like
the first "Forza Horizon" and even I think "Forza Horizon 2" actually landed on the 360. (tires screech) - Ouch.
- Oh, we got this. We got it. Oh, we don't got it. We don't. (screams) Did I just like about to run
into people and it just reset. (car crashes) - [Driver] Ouch. - I agree. Ouch. Don't turn off my Xbox 360. Next up. We have Middle-Earth:
Shadow of Mordor. Now this is the game that
I didn't even realize was on the 360. When you came to the
late Xbox 360 lifecycle. A lot of games started to struggle because while this was
very powerful for 2005, by the time 2013 rolled around
the 512 megabytes of RAM that was split between the CPU and the GPU was very restrictive. I think about games like "GTA V", which needed you to install
one disc to the hard drive and use the other disc to play off of just because you needed
the bandwidth to try to stream enough assets in. Is this server even
doing anything right now? Like I have no idea. There's no progress bar, there's nothing. Maybe it's because the
disc version is complete but the download is not. So we've been here for almost 30 minutes. And yet we have the exact
same downloading data screen. So I guess this is just sort
of a downside to the fact that while you can download
the games all you want, unless you actually know that they work, there may be inevitably in
this case, an actual whole half of the game that didn't download. (air quivers)
♪ Oh ♪ So I'm loading from my save game wherever I left that off
some number of years ago. - Hey, hey.
- Hey. We're there. We finally did it. And let's see where I left off. Oh, gonna like roll the
credits or something? What the? What? (alarm blares) What was that? - [Alex] Didn't do anything. - Was that like the very last frame of the cut scene at the end
of the game or something? Wait, hold on. Hold on. Dude, something's wrong
with the save file, I think. Oh, yeah, look, "Waiting
to respond area not safe." And then it crashes. This reminds me of the
old school days watching like Arby 'N' the Chief. Playing "Halo 3" is
actually not a good game to demo on the 360. It's always nice to experience
everything exactly the way it was with the original
hardware and whatnot. But "Halo 3" has not only been updated in the Master Chief collection, but if you play this exact copy of Halo 3 on an Xbox One X or Series X, it'll do the full like 4K
upscale, which looks phenomenal. Now, we can't talk about the 360 without talking about Kinect,
which is one of the main, (device dings)
it heard me. Kinect, stop listening. Using the K is one of the things that you cannot do on
more modern hardware. Now technically, the Xbox
One did have Kinect, but I don't think that it was compatible. And also Kinect for the
360 was a little bit more of a different experience. (device dings)
Stop listening! So you can see it sort of is able to build a skeleton for me. The Gunstringer instead of
the gun slinger. Hilarious. (gun bangs) (horse neighs) - Lay 'em down! (gun bangs) - Got 'em. You know, I'll say that
Kinect games do feel like one of the main reasons why you
would want to buy these things, and have them loaded up on
an actual original Xbox 360. Like this Kinect will not
plug into a newer Xbox. So it is one of the things where if there are these
experiences like Kinectimals that you never got to enjoy, well, this is your way to do it. So while it's great to
play the original hardware. The question is, is this
really the end of the line for the Xbox 360? Because don't forget, the vast
majority of non-Kinect games that were designed for the 360 will run on the Xbox One and the Series X. So my question is,
before the store closes, obviously we were able to buy
some stuff on the actual 360, but can we buy and download new games from an Xbox Series S, X, One X, One S, VCR, I mean, Xbox One. So let's see what happens
if we want to play 360 games and importantly try to
buy new 360 games on an Xbox Series S. The main reason I use the S is because of course it has no disc drive. If you have a Xbox One or Xbox Series X with the disc drive, you can just take your old
360 discs and put them in. But I'm curious to see
how well this handles it because let's be real,
digital is the future of Xbox, and well pretty much everything else. So this is kind of the way we're gonna be
preserving games in the future. Oh, yeah, "Far Cry 2?" Yes. So it is definitely
showing most of the games. Now I will say not 100
percent of the games that are designed for
360 work on newer Xbox's. I would say the majority,
the vast majority, but you will find a few that don't. Yeah, so like this is
a "Shadow of Mordor," but if I open up, this
is an Xbox One version, let's see if we can buy
some games for the 360, and make sure they're the same price and they all just kind of come across. 'Cause, theoretically they will, but I'm actually not totally sure. So here is a game that
is designed for 360. This is the 360 version and
I have a couple options. Now this is one of the
games that's included. Game Pass doesn't really count, but you can see that I do have
the option to purchase it. So that still works. You can
buy a certified refurbished Xbox Series S from your Xbox, subscribe to channel for Austin
buying Xbox's using Xbox's. Wait, are you trying to tell
me that none of the Xbox 360 Need for Speed games are available? The only Need for Speed games
I'm seeing are more modern ones that are designed for
like Xbox One or Series X. I know that Need for Speed Undercover for 360 is on sale right now, but it's not letting me
buy it on the Series S. "Cars 3" right now is on
sale for like $4 on the 360, but because I'm on a Series S, it's trying to download the
Xbox One version, which is $40. I actually legitimately
thought, maybe naively, that almost all Xbox 360 games
would just still show up in the store on the newer Xbox's. But you actually may legitimate need to pull out your old
Xbox, get it all online, download everything and
save it on your actual drive 'cause you don't know how long these things are gonna be around for. It's admirable for Microsoft to have kept the Xbox 360
store online for 19 years. And to be fair, the Xbox Live experience
is not shutting down, yet. It's clearly gonna have a
day in which they're gonna have to turn the servers off. Specifically, if you wanna
buy any Xbox 360 games, do it now. And ideally, do it on
the original hardware because a lot of the games
do not show up the same way on newer consoles. And while you could still
get some via like backwards compatibility and of
course nothing should ever stop your discs from working. Hopefully, you found this enlightening and a great reason to
dig through your closet, and bust out your good old Xbox 360. Much like the Xbox 360,
I was better in 2009, but well, the nursing
home comes for us all. (exciting upbeat music)
