Key Takeaways
- Cheap Xbox 360 games are plentiful and easy to find, many for as little as $5 to $10. Digital games are also still available in a roundabout way.
- Xbox 360 games can still feel fresh and current, with plenty of hidden gems ready to be discovered.
- Apart from the marketplace, the Xbox 360’s online functionality remains intact, and it’s easy to transition to newer Xbox consoles.
The Xbox 360 Marketplace may be closed for good, but that doesn’t mean you should pack up your console just yet. With a nearly 20-year history and massive game library, there’s invariably plenty of catching up to do, and you may be surprised at how fresh many of those games still feel.
Games Are Still Cheap (And There Are Lots of Them)
The good news for anyone like me who’s spent the last few decades collecting video games is that quite a few of those games have become valuable. The flip side is that games for many old consoles are expensive to buy. While there are still bargains to be found for consoles like the NES, Sega Genesis, or GameCube, most games that are the least bit rare or desirable can seem beyond reach.
The Xbox 360 might be old, but it’s not that old. It was also a wildly successful console. That combination means there’s a lot of games out there, and demand hasn’t yet driven up the prices for the majority of them. While there are some exceptions, you can find many of the Xbox 360’s best games for as little as $5 to $10 on eBay, and you can score them for even less than that if you’re willing to dig through the shelves at your local thrift stores or pawn shops. Many of the less common, pricier games for the console are still in the $20 to $30 range.
The sheer size of the Xbox 360’s game library means that there are invariably a lot of great titles that even the most avid gamers have missed. It’s usually impossible to keep up with every game that interests these days, and the same was true back then. Now is the perfect time to catch up on hidden gems or entries in popular series you might have missed, for just a couple of bucks.
And despite the Xbox 360 Marketplace shutting down, you can still get digital games for your console by buying them through the Xbox.com website, or through a newer Xbox One or Series S/X console. Once purchased, any games you own will simply show up in the download history on your 360, and can be re-downloaded at any time.
The selection of games is more limited than the original Marketplace since it only includes backward-compatible games, but there are still hundreds of titles available, and plenty of bargains to be found whenever a new sale rolls around.
Almost 20 Years Old, but Far From Retro
The Xbox 360 occupies a unique spot in the history of video game consoles and, in many ways, marks the beginning of the era we’re still living in. Twenty years, or even ten years, used to seem like an eternity in video games. The jump from 1978 to 1988 meant a shift from Space Invaders to Super Mario Bros. 3. Another leap to 1998 took us to games like Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that are entirely unlike anything from a decade prior.
Games have advanced considerably in more recent decades, but this has generally been more refinement than a revolution. Graphics have improved, games are bigger and more ambitious, and new genres have emerged, but there is still a general sense of familiarity. Many skills that are transferable from games you played ten or fifteen years earlier, which is true across many different genres.
Many Xbox 360 games are also still “current” games on other platforms. Dozens of titles are still sold, and remain popular, on platforms like Steam or the Nintendo eShop in both remastered and untouched re-releases. They’re often priced far higher than what a used copy will cost you for the 360. In some cases, the original Xbox 360 version of a game may be preferable to shoddy ports on other platforms.
And that’s to say nothing of the many actually retro games available for the Xbox 360, including some great arcade ports and extensive collections of arcade and console games.
There’s also the practical matter of the Xbox 360 being a native HD console that simply connects to your TV with an HDMI cable. One of the biggest roadblocks with older consoles that have only composite or component connections is the added expense and hassle involved with getting them connected (and looking good) on a modern TV. The Xbox 360 doesn’t require any extra effort or investment to look and play great.
It’s Still Online
Other than the online marketplace. the Xbox 360 is still online. You can still download and re-download games, you can still play online multiplayer games (although you now need a Game Pass Core subscription instead of the old Xbox Live Gold membership), and you can still get achievements and add to your Gamerscore.
This may change at some point, but Microsoft hasn’t yet given any indication it intends to shut down that functionality anytime soon. A single Xbox account makes it easy to pick up and carry all of your digital backwards compatible games, achievements, and save games with you over to a newer Xbox Series S or X if you do decide to upgrade.
If you don’t currently have an Xbox 360 and are looking to buy one, however, you may want to focus on the later Xbox 360 S or E models, as they are the only models with built-in Wi-Fi.
Some Maintenance Required
The lack of built-in Wi-Fi on some models isn’t the only indication that the console is showing its age a bit. I’ve already run into problems with the disc drive on my Xbox 360, which appears to be a fairly common issue.
Analog stick drift is another issue you’ll likely encounter if you haven’t already, although that’s to be expected even with current-generation consoles. Others have also reported more significant problems like motherboard failures that can cause the console to stop working altogether.
In some cases. these are easy fixes (with plenty of guides available to help you). Some repairs require more work or even necessitate replacing the console altogether (which is still an affordable option). We also can’t forget that physical Xbox 360 games are on optical discs that have likely been kicking around for well over a decade. A good cleaning might fix some problems, but you may encounter some games that are simply beyond repair.
It’s the Games That Matter
There’s a reason the Xbox 360 was so successful: It had great games, and lots of them. That’s still true today, and as the success of the relatively under-powered Nintendo Switch and the popularity of retro-inspired indie games shows, it’s not necessarily the latest and most advanced games that people actually always want to play.
