Xbox LIVE being discontinued for Original Xbox consoles and games

[gekko]

I don't consider 4.5 years after its successor has been out "pretty quick" as you put it. Any other generation, 360 would be getting replaced this fall. Considering no new consoles have even been announced, I wouldn't worry too much about playing 360 on Live in a few years.

Dropping support for Xbox Live is actually a good thing to most 360 owners. By most, I mean the percentage that don't play original Xbox games on Live anymore (I don't have figures, but I would guess 99.9%). Supporting legacy systems is a pain in the ass for developers, and it prevents adding new features to maintain the backwards compatibility. One example is the friends list limit at 100, which many people request to be increased but due to compatibility with the original Xbox, they were unable to change it.

Xbox Live will only get better by dropping support for the original Xbox.