Seven years ago we said goodbye to the original XBOX

Seven years ago on this day we said goodbye to where Kodi(XBMC) once started. On 26 May 2010 we officially announced that XBOX support and it's development would continue elsewhere.

Here's the original announcement from 26 May 2010

XBMC (XBMP really) started as a program for modified XBOX consoles. In the following years, XBMC has grown into a multi-platform, multi-architecture media center that runs on most standard hardware. The hardware and legal limitations of the XBOX were always a concern and the Team has instead focused on running on the hardware that most people already have.

The last official release for the XBOX by the XBMC team was Atlantis, over 18 months ago. Since then, one brave soul (Arnova) has been merging code from the main codebase into the XBOX branch in our repository. Because there were many users out there that took advantage of these updates, we had no problem with this.

But times have changed. The XBOX has hard limits for what it can handle. Some users are satisfied with these limits, and we encourage them to use XBMC there if they are happy. But it is a popular misconception that official XBOX development is still taking place by the team, so we have decided to set it free. We have enough on our plates already, and worrying about a deprecated platform just increases our workload. A few days ago the XBOX branch was finally removed from our subversion repository.

But loyal XBMC for XBOX users fear not! In addition to his role as an XBMC developer, Arnova plans to continue development on the XBOX — just not here. You can find the new project’s home at sourceforge. We’re leaving it in his hands to decide how to handle the project’s administration. How he manages the forum, bug tracker, scm, developers, etc. is up to him. In other words, don’t complain to us

In order to help users to find relevant help and discussion, we will be making the XBOX section of our forum read-only on Monday, June 07. It may be moved in the future, but for now it will stay for reference. This also means the end of XBOX support in the wiki and IRC. Arnova has requested a snapshot of the wiki that he may host if he wishes as we begin to prune XBOX-specfic information from ours.

We wish Arnova and the project the best of luck as we bid a fond farewell to a big part of our past.

Now seven years later the project still lives on at https://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/ and on 27 February last year they released their 3.5.3 version for the original XBOX. It's amazing that the old XBOX is still alive and used as media center device with a lively community around it.