" brb oh no! no xbox live? how will i meet 13 year old racists who insult my mother? "

Good riddance. The two people who were playing Halo 2 will be upset, but if it means that the service will improve, then I am all for it.
 
Oh, and it doesn't take long to get 100 friends. You would be surprised how many co-workers, friends, and family have an Xbox 360 and XBL. Maybe it is because of where I live, but it isn't difficult to get 100 friends if you are social. Plus it is made up of a lot of my old "gaming" friends back when I played WOW, and competitive Counter-Strike.

I always meant to fire up Star Wars Battlefront 2. I even bought the DLC for it. Oh well. I had a quick feeling of outrage at this announcement, but it subsided faster than I thought. XBox 1 has to be, at least for me and my friends, the most quickly abandoned console of our lives. We still play PS2, PS1, Gamecube, Dreamcast, and even SNES and NES titles on occasion, but I really can't remember the last XBOX 1 game I had a passing interest in, other than the one I previously mentioned, and that one more because of love of Star Wars than Xbox.

I hate how they are s*** canning backwards compatibility support these days. There were a lot of great and unique games on the original system (besides Halo 2). Bad move imo.

I haven't played an XBOX game in a long time. One of the reasons was the lack of support from Microsoft. I bought a few of those games and would of bought more had they come out with more titles.

After getting my 360 in 9/08, I tested the backwards compatibility by popping in Burnout 3.  After playing around and going, "Yup, that's Burnout 3 alright," I put it back and never touched it again.  Gave my console and old games to a friend in exchange for my current gaming PC.

Now they just need to add support for the Timesplitters games so I can actually care when they remove online support for them in April.

Them dropping service for a service I've paid for since that service launched = no $50/year for them.
 
The fact that I can't play Phantom Dust online with friends come April is enough for me to not support their services. 
 
At least if Steam/PSN/Wii shut-down servers, I didn't pay a dime for them. It's a fact of life, sun-rise/sun-set. But on XBL, I expect my $50/year to go to maintaining previous generations services. Too bad to find out that's wrong and I've given them $300 for nothing.

And nothing of value was lost.
 
Aside from a select few games, most servers are empty.
 
And if these empty servers are holding back stuff for new games get rid of them. Halo 2/Splinter Cell/Starwars BF are small prices to pay for new stuff. Out with the old in with the new.

WTF ORIGINAL XBOX STILL WORKS?

It's funny how these original xbox games had a longer run than some current gen games. It's also weird to consider that in 10 years, it'll still be easier to find old genesis and NES games than it would be to buy and play some XBLA games and DLC. Many games now won't even run right without patches, which could be impossible to get if MS or Sony decides to cut off support on future consoles. 

 As for Halo 2, maybe MS can even port over Halo 1 and 2 as XBLA titles with modern Live support and achievements. People would buy those..I would.

Well, there goes my idea on buying an Xbox. -__-

" You know what this means? No Halo 2, meaning friends lists limit will go up.  *Edit*  Might help if I read the article all the way before I post. Sorry, cool though  *Edit 2* Could you guys at Giantbomb do a server shutdown party like you did for the matrix and other MMOs? Everyone bust out your Xbox! "

i think its stupid why dont we email or call microsoft so we can keep the internet the xbox is no good without the internet i guess im going to have to sell it if we dont get microsoft to not do it

" And nothing of value was lost.  Aside from a select few games, most servers are empty.  And if these empty servers are holding back stuff for new games get rid of them. Halo 2/Splinter Cell/Starwars BF are small prices to pay for new stuff. Out with the old in with the new. "