Ten years ago, the servers supporting Microsoft’s original Xbox console shut down, leaving a number of less popular games on the console forgotten and with no way for fans of it to play with their own old friends. The Insignia Project, however, aims to revive the original Xbox servers, without any modification required.
THere are some ways that the Xbox servers can be revived, mainly through things like Xlink Kai. However, that requires a LAN connection, and can only be used by two people at a time, so it’s not entirely suitable, especially if you want to have a big team game with multiple friends.
The team behind the Insignia Project has posted a video and a statement about how they’re going to go about restoring the servers, and they’ve apparently been working on this since late last year. Apparently, they aim to have Insignia functional by August of this year.
While normally something like Insignia and the original Xbox servers might ordinarily run into legal issues, despite not being supported by Microsoft the Insignia Project group hasn’t apparently run into any legal troubles, likely because Microsoft doesn’t see anything to worry about.
Considering the large number of classic games that still remain on the original Xbox with no way to play them with friends, the Insignia Project might have a lot of fans among those who still have their original Xboxes around and in working order.
Since Microsoft has also said that they intend to bring more original Xbox games over to the Xbox Game Pass and backwards compatibility services, the Insignia Project may not last long, but even if most of their games go over to the Xbox Series X, lots of older Xbox players are sure to appreciate their efforts.
