Game Room (Xbox 360 Game)

Game Room was a social gaming service for the Xbox 360 video game system, Microsoft Windows PCs, and Windows Phone 7. Launched on March 24, 2010, Game Room let players download classic video games and compete against each other for high scores. Players on both Xbox 360 and Windows PCs could access Game Room through their respective versions of Microsoft's Live online services (Xbox Live and Games for Windows – Live). The servers shut down on Halloween of 2017.

Gameplay
Games in Game Room are launched by selecting them while players browse through their arcade. Each game offers a "classic mode", where one can set a number of gameplay options, dependent on the game's format. Arcade games have DIP switches that may be changed in order to increase difficulty or offer additional lives to the player, while console games have their original gameplay variations. Both are accessible using Game Room's on-screen interfaces.

Also, some games can be played in a special "ranked mode," which allows scores to be posted to online leaderboards while limiting gameplay options to a single variation common to all players, as well as disallowing several Game Room options, seemingly to prevent falsifying rankings or other forms of cheating.

While browsing their arcades, players see avatars of themselves and their online friends wandering around and playing the games; Xbox 360 players see their console avatars, while PC players see generic avatars instead. Similarly, players may visit the arcades of their online friends as well as play the games found there. If a friend's arcade has a game that the player does not own, the player may purchase plays or may use their in-game tokens. However, the player may play copies of a game they already own for free. Players may also challenge their friends at various games in both score-based and skill-based contests.

During gameplay, players win medals based on their score or how long they have played the game (both for that individual play and all-time on that game). Medals are offered in gold, silver and bronze, with each being worth a certain number of points. As players earn medals, they can advance in levels, which will unlock new themes and set pieces to be used in their arcades. Like other LIVE titles, players also earn achievements based on their gameplay.

Discontinued of Game Room
Game Room was most likely delisted early in March of 2015. The game, its downloadable Game Packs, and Avatar items were last confirmed available on February 20th, 2015 and were removed by the next Archive.org capture on March 17th.

On March 4th TrueAchievements.com forum users began posting  about errors making purchases, accessing previously purchased games, and re-downloading game packs. User Flolais posted on March 7th that they had received word from Xbox support that said “their solution was to enjoy what is left of the game”.

By mid-March the Game Room application was encountering errors on launch for some players. A workaround of launching the app while the Xbox was offline proved useful for accessing games that had already been downloaded but purchases and re-downloads were largely not possible. A later forum post allegedly confirmed that “they shut down the servers for good on October 31st, 2017”.

Clearly the extensive licensing involved is one of the reasons that Game Room was ultimately shut down. However, Krome Studios was also reportedly hit with huge layoffs in the same year that Game Room shipped and though they contested reports of the studio’s closure, the change in staff and management likely played a role in Game Room’s demise. Leaderboard outages and other problems with online functionality were frequently reported and some bugs were never addressed, most likely due to turmoil within the studio.

Like many of Microsoft’s attempts with “living” online services (Karaoke, 1 vs 100, and later Xbox Fitness), it may simply be that the company found Game Room to be unprofitable in the face of the expenses to support it.