Hey everyone,
343 made an article awhile back when online support for the original games would be reduced or disabled. However, Spartan Ops on Halo 4 was still supposed to be supported.
Source: https://support.halowaypoint.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054131591-Xbox-360-Only-Online-Services-Were-Reduced-or-Disabled-for-Halo-360-Games-on-January-13-2022
Just a few weeks ago (talking sometime in May of 2024), I was able to play Spartan Ops on my 360. But my Xbox Live Gold expired on May 27th. I just renewed it, except now the service is called "Xbox Game Pass Core". It is supposed to still support everything the original Xbox Live Gold did from what I understand. However, with this switch, I am no longer able to access Spartan Ops on my 360. I now get the message "The Halo 4 server is not available at this time, please try again later."
Out of curiosity, I then tested to see if another 360 game would still have online support via "Xbox Game Pass Core". So I fired up CoD Black Ops 1, and was able to connect and play a round of zombies online. So the original Gold service seems to still be working in that regard as intended.
So I'm wondering if this is a specific isssue to Halo 4 or Spartan Ops in general. Or maybe the server for Spartan Ops is actually just down for now and has nothing to do with the switch between Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Core. But everything on Halo MCC on my Series X is working just fine, so it isn't like it's a Halo-wide server issue.
As another test, I installed Halo 4 with backward compatibility onto my Series X just to see if that would work. Still no luck, as I received the same error message I did on my 360.
I realize I can play Spartan Ops on MCC and it is working fine, but I want to access it on my 360 and was able to just a few weeks ago. Just trying to get some of those achievements.
Any support or information regarding this issue would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.
