Those nostalgic stragglers still battling it out in multiplayer "Halo 2" campaigns on Xbox Live might want to put down the battle rifles and plasma pistols, and gaze one last time across the sands of Zanzibar.

That's because the war will soon be over, even if they aren't done.

Microsoft early this morning delivered some bad news to holdouts continuing to use its Xbox Live online gaming service to play games originally created for its first Xbox. As of April 15, the company is discontinuing Xbox Live for the original Xbox, according to the post by Xbox Live GM Marc Whitten (via VentureBeat). That means games originally made for the 9-year-old console will no longer work on Xbox Live, even if people are playing them on the newer Xbox 360.

To be clear, gamers should still be able to play original Xbox titles on the console offline. And for Halo fans, there's always the Live-enabled "Halo 3" and "Halo 3: ODST" on Xbox 360.

But particularly in the case of Halo 2, it's the end of an era.

The game, released in 2004, was the first in the blockbuster Halo franchise to work with Xbox Live -- introducing many a gamer to the joy of competing online against friends and strangers, and the pain of being gunned down by some foul-mouthed preteen on the other side of the globe. In fact, my Halo 2 "skills" inspired my current Xbox Live gamertag, NathanielYork, in honor of one of the early astronauts in the Martian Chronicles -- the one who dies almost immediately after setting foot on the planet.

"There’s no greater example of the power of the Xbox LIVE community than the Halo franchise," Whitten writes in his post. "Halo 2 has had an amazing run on LIVE, with a dedicated community more than five years after launch and well into the next generation of consoles. It has fundamentally changed the way we play video games."

OK, so why cut it off? "(As) we look down the road, we’ll continue to evolve the service with features and experiences that harness the full power of Xbox 360," he writes. "To reach our aspiration, we need to make changes to the service that are incompatible with our original Xbox v1 games."

That includes not only original Xbox games that have been playable on Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 up to this point, but also downloadable "Xbox Live Originals" games.

Presumably there will be some sort of appropriate memorial service at the Halo 2 Burial Mounds -- with the company no doubt recommending the purchase of Microsoft points in lieu of flowers.