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Xbox Live for Xbox 1 officially killed

Bungie says goodbye to Halo 2.

Microsoft should by now have officially discontinued Xbox Live support for original Xbox consoles and games.

The service was due to be switched off at midnight PDT, i.e. about 20 minutes ago.

As a result you can no longer play Xbox 1 games online in any way - not using an original Xbox, nor by playing a backwards-compatible title on Xbox 360, or even by downloading an Xbox Originals effort.

Hardest hit by this is Halo 2, which has sustained a decent following since its spectacular November 2004 launch. (Read our extensive farewell, The Making of Halo 2.)

Bungie and fans got together to give the game a proper send-off yesterday, and the developer even published thank-you messages, which you can check out in Kotaku's gallery.

"To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games," was what Microsoft's Marc Whitten said about the decision to shut down Xbox 1 support when it was announced.