The Best Xbox 360 Games

There’s no official ranking of the best Xbox 360 games; Microsoft doesn’t keep one. On top of that, Xbox 360 games fall into two groups today, and that dividing line matters more for your pick than any order: titles Microsoft itself has confirmed run on newer consoles too, and classics whose compatibility you have to check yourself. The selection below is an editorial one and takes that split into account. How to check is explained at the end, and it only takes half a minute.

Three games with confirmed compatibility

When Microsoft launched cloud backward compatibility for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers on 31 March 2021, it named three titles from the Xbox 360 era: Fable II, Viva Piñata and Kameo. They also happen to be three different reasons to go back to that generation.

• Fable II is a fantasy RPG in which your decisions change the world around your character and how people react to them. Of the three, it’s the closest to what players expect from a big RPG today.
• Viva Piñata is a garden-building game populated by papier-mâché animals. It looks like a kids’ game, yet it’s one of the most elaborate economy games of its time.
• Kameo: Elements of Power was one of the console’s launch titles, an action adventure from Rare in which your character transforms into different creatures.

The cloud option has the advantage that you need neither old hardware nor a download. How to get to it is covered in our Xbox Cloud Gaming guide, and what exactly the subscription includes is tracked in our overview of what’s in Game Pass and how to follow catalog changes.

Classics people still switch the console on for

This selection is an editorial decision, not an official list. We deliberately don’t claim whether a specific game runs on Xbox One or Series X|S. The backward compatibility catalog has been closed since June 2019 and the only binding list is kept by Microsoft, so claiming a status without it is pointless.

Game	Genre	Why it made the list
Halo 3	sci-fi shooter	The console’s flagship and its most-played multiplayer
Gears of War	cover shooter	Defined how console cover shooting works for many years to come
Mass Effect 2	sci-fi RPG	Characters and decisions players still remember years later
Red Dead Redemption	western action	An open world built on atmosphere, not on a dense quest list
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim	fantasy RPG	The most widespread gateway into big RPGs, period
Dark Souls	action RPG	Difficulty as part of the storytelling, a whole genre is still named after it
Portal 2	puzzle game	Humor and two-player co-op that haven’t aged
Forza Horizon	arcade racing	The first entry in the series that took racing off the track and into open country
Left 4 Dead 2	co-op shooter	Four players against the horde, perfect for a single evening
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition	sandbox	The split-screen version that got consoles lent out for weekends away

If you’re after the current lineup rather than retro, you’ll find newer picks in our overview of the best Xbox games.

How to check compatibility yourself

There are three ways, and each takes a moment:

1. The game’s page in the Xbox store. Every title lists the platforms it runs on. This is the quickest check, because you also see right away whether the game can be bought at all.
2. Microsoft’s official list. The backward compatibility hub on xbox.com links to a support article listing compatible and excluded titles. That’s the only binding source, and the other lists around the internet just copy it.
3. The filter in the subscription catalog. The game catalog has a “Play on” option that switches between Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, handhelds, cloud and Xbox Play Anywhere. It’s handy when you’re not after a specific game but want to know what you can play on the device you have.

The search on the backward compatibility page itself is unreliable: when we checked on 11 September 2026, it returned no results. How the whole program works and what Microsoft added to it on newer consoles is summed up in our article on Xbox backward compatibility.

Where to buy them legally today

Microsoft closed the digital Xbox 360 store on 29 July 2024, and since then you can’t buy new content on the console or on marketplace.xbox.com. What you can buy are backward compatible titles on Xbox One, on Xbox Series X|S and on Xbox.com. The details of what the store closure means for a library you already own are covered in Xbox 360 today and what still works on it.

The second route is second-hand discs. With backward compatible disc games, the console downloads the game once you insert the disc, but you can only play it with the disc in the drive. The Xbox Series S has no disc drive, so you can’t use discs there at all, and that’s the main difference that counts when choosing between the models. It’s covered in our comparison of Xbox Series X and Series S.

Who shouldn’t bother going back to the 360

• If you care about online play. Multiplayer on Xbox 360 does still run, but it depends on each game’s publisher and its servers. For games from that era, most of those servers are already offline.
• If you don’t have an old library. Building a collection from scratch out of second-hand discs costs more than a subscription, with no guarantee a disc will still read after all these years. Compare the prices with our overview of how much each Xbox costs today and what’s included.
• If you’re looking for a cheap way into the brand. The generation one step newer suits that better, and whether it still makes sense today is covered in is the Xbox One still worth it.
• If you want motion games. Those rely on an accessory that hasn’t been made for a long time, and what’s left of it is summed up in our article on Kinect and what it’s good for today.

FAQ

Information verified as of 11 September 2026. The binding list of compatible games is kept by Microsoft on its support site, so before buying an older title it’s worth checking its store page. More articles about the brand are collected in our Xbox hub on Gamers Together.