ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
There's some unfortunate news concerning the Xbox 360 and Wing Commander Arena. Microsoft has announced that the console's digital storefront will be closing in July 2024. This means some 220 games, including Arena, will no longer be available for sale in any form. Wing Commander's debut on the Xbox was part of a new digital-standalone push dubbed Xbox Live Arcade. The results were quite impressive given a variety of constraints such as a 50 megabyte download cap and $10 asking price. Arena was the platform's first 16-player game and made heavy use of features like matchmaking and online leaderboards. Although Arena never received a proper physical release, the "demo" of the game was included on the cover disc of the November 2007 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine. These demos could be "unlocked" into the full game, but that function will presumably be removed as well.
Since the game was released in 2007, this will mark 17 years of digital availability, which is honestly more than I would have expected given that the entire Xbox brand was less than six years old at the time. This will also mark 20 years since the virtual Xbox store rolled out in November 2004 (on the original Xbox). Fun fact: Arena was finally just released in the Japan market back in 2019! Anyhow, as the rest of Microsoft's Xbox infrastructure will continue, the good news is that people who already own the game will be able to redownload it. Online multiplayer is currently unaffected for the foreseeable future, although the writing is on the wall and this probably won't be available forever either. Hopefully by the time it goes away, the emulation scene will have figured out ways to keep things running. In the mean time, be sure to buy your copies before time runs out!
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Original update published on August 22, 2023
Since the game was released in 2007, this will mark 17 years of digital availability, which is honestly more than I would have expected given that the entire Xbox brand was less than six years old at the time. This will also mark 20 years since the virtual Xbox store rolled out in November 2004 (on the original Xbox). Fun fact: Arena was finally just released in the Japan market back in 2019! Anyhow, as the rest of Microsoft's Xbox infrastructure will continue, the good news is that people who already own the game will be able to redownload it. Online multiplayer is currently unaffected for the foreseeable future, although the writing is on the wall and this probably won't be available forever either. Hopefully by the time it goes away, the emulation scene will have figured out ways to keep things running. In the mean time, be sure to buy your copies before time runs out!
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Original update published on August 22, 2023
