By NFS joins 18 other EA games in testing right now
It’s been a while since we last talked about Insignia, otherwise known as the unofficial replacement for Xbox Live on the original Xbox, and that’s basically because there hasn’t been a major announcement to shout about.
However, the team is back this week to reveal that Insignia will go from supporting 199 games to 200 very soon, and that 200th title is an extra special one – it’s Need for Speed Underground 2.
Why’s that a big deal? Well, it’s because EA’s games have been very challenging for the Insignia team to get working online again, but they’ve made a breakthrough and managed to get 19 of them partially running so far, with NFS Underground 2 being confirmed as the first one to be added to the service – although there’s not a date just yet.
“Currently, 19 [EA] titles can log in to Insignia. These titles also have partial presence support, meaning the Friend List is accessible, but private messaging and invites are not yet functional. Need for Speed: Underground 2 has fully functioning matchmaking. 11 titles have partial matchmaking support. In these cases, we can create lobbies, but cannot yet start actual gameplay. Leaderboard and tournament support are still not yet implemented.”
“We are happy to announce that Need for Speed Underground 2, both PAL and NTSC/ASIA releases, will be the first EA-enabled game on Insignia, and also our 200th supported game. We are not currently able to share an exact release timeframe, but we believe it is close!”
Beyond this, the Insignia team has started looking into the possibility of supporting “Games for Windows” and Xbox 360 titles. As you can see, they’re starting with backwards compatible original Xbox games, which hopefully means we’ll get to a point where these Insignia-supported OG Xbox titles will actually be playable on Xbox 360 consoles as well.
There are no plans to make native Xbox 360 games playable online through Insignia until Microsoft reveals its end-of-life plans for Xbox Live on the console, but this does mean that when the official servers eventually go down, Insignia may provide a way to still access certain Xbox 360 games online.
Exciting times for Insignia, then! Keep in mind that it’s not the easiest thing to get up and running, and it’s not affiliated with Xbox whatsoever (so you’re using it at your own risk), but we’re hoping Microsoft will partner up with these folks at some point and lend a hand – after all, it’s great to have classic Xbox games up and running again!
Excited to see this for Insignia? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source bsky.app]
Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.