I think Xbox needs to start thinking like a developer, not a publisher, if they want to keep the engine steering in the right course. These guys constantly use the excuse that they have a trillion-dollar company backing to get away with almost anything now. Playing ‘house clean-up’ all the time isn’t going to work for everyone.
I think Xbox lost any hope of competing when they started putting their first party titles on PC and other platforms. As cynical as it would have been and as pissed off as it would have made people, if Minecraft especially, Halo, Forza etc. were still only playable on Series X, even with franchises like Halo and Gears of War a husk of their former selves, the Xbox would still have value compared to a PlayStation or Switch.
These days? I just can't think of a reason to buy one unless you're really adamant on not paying for a PC, or you want streaming box for the living room with Game Pass on it. PC + Switch 2 basically lets you play anything that comes out, especially as Sony's exclusives only seem to stay that way for a couple of years before arriving on PC.
I guess they knew they have no way of building exclusives IPs as good as Sony, Nintendo, so they try covering every base they can. They got complacent and it just falls apart when things downsize just a bit.
I still know people who buy Xbox, just for conveniences and understandably the prosumer ecosystem. I like how Xbox doesn't charge you for cloud saves in every platform.
Ngl, it's kinda funny reading this, when I have a pretty good idea how the next review is going to go. But I'll hold off on talking about all that for now. I think one thing the 360 did right is that it was COOL. More so than the PS3. So much more (obviously) than the Wii. Microsoft's marketing division really hit the bullseye with that name. It just has a ring to it.
When this generation got started, HDTV was still new, and it would be years before I could experience it. Once I did, though, omg, Microsoft and Sony betting on it as the future made sense. I will never forget playing Mass Effect 1 in glorious 1080p on my roommate's 40" screen. Also Mirror's Edge. (I was not a shooter fan, so I barely cared about Halo). Those games will always live on as shining stars in my memory as unforgettable experiences that really showed what all the fuss about power was about.
Whatever you're thinking, I guarantee I hate the Xbox One even more than that XD
For sure the 360 just looked powerful. I like the aesthetic of the PS3 but the infamous Spider-Man font was really tacky and it looked almost fragile while the 360 was this big tower of green, big analogue stick energy.
I hung onto the PS2 long enough for CRT TV's to get challenging to find in shops, so I remember getting a 360 and a cheap LCD but even then one of my first games for the console: The Simpsons Game looked better than the actual cartoon did.
I've never formally ranked them, but the 360 might also be my favourite console of all time. I was fortunate to have all three (360, PS3, Wii) during that era, and it by far got the most play. As you note, they may have eventually lost the sales war, but the 360 won the battle of the hearts and minds. Sadly, it's been all downhill for Xbox since then.
Considering you can pick them up for as little as $2 NZD (as we detailed here: https://pixelfix.substack.com/p/scoring-gear-2-xbox-360) and the games haven't rocketed up either, the 360 is an easy recommend for anyone wanting a painless and cheap entry point into retro gaming.
I also managed to own them all around when they were present and in my experience, there was a 5-6 month window where we all played Wii Sports daily, then I tried a few of the Wii Sonic games and Red Steel, we realised how bad most non-Nintendo IP's played on the Wii but were bored of Wii Sports so it sat there unused.
I bought the PS3 purely for Killzone, Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid 4. It has lots of good games but it just cannot match the 360 in my opinion.
Oh boy and how sharply downhill did it go... expect some colourful language in the final episode, I'm still bitter about how that console and those franchises turned out.
I remember reading this! A great article and I loved to see some restoration work done.
A great read and I love your scoring! My G.O.A.T. also. Did have the red ring of death once but it was fixed free of charge. I was so gutted when it happened that I immediately drove to Woolies to buy another so I could continue my game without waiting, ended up with two units. So many good gaming memories and many of my favourite ever games Bioshock, Dead Space, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Modern Warfare, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, I could go on. Just a top gaming experience period.
Glad you enjoyed it! I was lucky enough to not get red-ringed but even still, I replaced my 360 a couple of times back in the day but am now using one that hasn't had any issues so far; its vents could do with a clean but I don't use it often enough to worry too much.
Honestly, I can't even begin to list how many games I loved for the 360 or how many classics there are, I didn't even mention Crackdown, or Supreme Commander: still my favourite RTS, or the Civilization Revolution or Total Miner, Castle Miner Z and any of those other XBLA Indie classics. We'll never get those times back but damn, I'm glad I experienced them.
Yes, so many classics. I still have some of the original discs, no 360 any more but I can’t bear to get rid of them for what they represent. Have a Series X but it’s not the same, good times indeed but different times also. Love your retrospective series btw 👍
I'm thinking of ways to keep it going as of now, I know these series are quite popular but I don't actually own every Sega console to make one for them (missing the Master System) and I've just never cared for PlayStation apart from the PS2. That being said, plenty of video game series retrospectives planned with Halo coming soon.
I think one thing that helped the 360 a lot in terms of third party titles was not just that Wii was underpowered and PS3 was an architectural mess, but also that they caught the tail end of PC still being considered a finicky hobbyist option. Steam was on the rise but wasn't nearly as omnipresent as it would become, hardware management was all over the place, and it was sometimes a crapshoot whether a game would work out of the box or even at all after hours of troubleshooting, patch hunting, and tweaking. Ironically, all the raised expectations of permanent high-speed connectivity and the consolidation of digital distribution that the next console generation would lean on also meant that PC could become almost as consistent, while still being more open and capable - consoles lost their main edge, and had to compete with desperate exclusivity, 'couch appeal,' and a sad arms race of gimmicks. Or that's my take as a smug PC elitist.
The 360 was my first non-Nintendo console. I actually earned one by submitting a bunch of solutions for my calculus textbook on cramster.com. I have fond memories of playing Halo 3, GoW, Oblivion, Portal, Half Life 2, and Dark Souls on it.
I had a 360, but it was stolen in a burglary along with about 2/3 of my games. Being far more of a PC gamer by then anyway, and secondarily a retro gamer, I sold the rest of my 360 games, rather than replace the console. Also being a PC gamer meant that I refused to pay for online multiplayer and have never been comfortable with playing FPSes with a gamepad, so I didn't own Halo 3, for example. To this day I don't really get why Halo was a big deal. I loved Gears of War though, my favorite game on the console. To me it controlled far more naturally on a gamepad than a true FPS did, but maybe that's just a personal bias, that I enjoyed the game enough to overlook the controls.
And if I'm being honest, I feel a certain anti-nostalgia about this period in my life. I was learning to navigate adulthood. My apartment was burglarized twice in one year and shortly after the second break-in, my girlfriend at the time dumped me. The Great Recession was going on and I was working in the financial industry; I managed to keep my job but my company had multiple rounds of layoffs.
If I try to set aside the feelings and look at it objectively, the 360/PS3 era strikes me as the point in time when a lot of interesting things were happening in games; it was basically the last console generation that represented a major technological leap forward, which also means that it basically marks the beginning of the current era.
But on the downside, one thing the modern era is marked by is the collapse in differentiation among console libraries. I'm not sure if this has been measured objectively, but to me this generation marks the point in time where we could perhaps first say the libraries are more undifferentiated than they are differentiated. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to study this objectively, when that threshold was crossed.
So without the benefit of nostalgia like you're describing, it's hard for me to have a strong opinion here on 360 vs. PS3, the way battles like SNES vs. Genesis (vs. DOS!) and PS1 vs. N64 (vs. Windows!) bring out intense opinions to this day, and the hardware there has very clear strengths and weaknesses relative to its competitor.
A wonderfully objective and unbiased review 😂 Still a good read.
I only owned the original Xbox and never went back to it so missed the legendary 360 era. From the outside though, I could tell that Microsoft's one key success was their prescience in online services, they somehow absolutely nailed that on the head, making it their killer feature while their competitors played catch-up.
I think Xbox needs to start thinking like a developer, not a publisher, if they want to keep the engine steering in the right course. These guys constantly use the excuse that they have a trillion-dollar company backing to get away with almost anything now. Playing ‘house clean-up’ all the time isn’t going to work for everyone.
I think Xbox lost any hope of competing when they started putting their first party titles on PC and other platforms. As cynical as it would have been and as pissed off as it would have made people, if Minecraft especially, Halo, Forza etc. were still only playable on Series X, even with franchises like Halo and Gears of War a husk of their former selves, the Xbox would still have value compared to a PlayStation or Switch.
These days? I just can't think of a reason to buy one unless you're really adamant on not paying for a PC, or you want streaming box for the living room with Game Pass on it. PC + Switch 2 basically lets you play anything that comes out, especially as Sony's exclusives only seem to stay that way for a couple of years before arriving on PC.
I guess they knew they have no way of building exclusives IPs as good as Sony, Nintendo, so they try covering every base they can. They got complacent and it just falls apart when things downsize just a bit.
I still know people who buy Xbox, just for conveniences and understandably the prosumer ecosystem. I like how Xbox doesn't charge you for cloud saves in every platform.
Ngl, it's kinda funny reading this, when I have a pretty good idea how the next review is going to go. But I'll hold off on talking about all that for now. I think one thing the 360 did right is that it was COOL. More so than the PS3. So much more (obviously) than the Wii. Microsoft's marketing division really hit the bullseye with that name. It just has a ring to it.
When this generation got started, HDTV was still new, and it would be years before I could experience it. Once I did, though, omg, Microsoft and Sony betting on it as the future made sense. I will never forget playing Mass Effect 1 in glorious 1080p on my roommate's 40" screen. Also Mirror's Edge. (I was not a shooter fan, so I barely cared about Halo). Those games will always live on as shining stars in my memory as unforgettable experiences that really showed what all the fuss about power was about.
Whatever you're thinking, I guarantee I hate the Xbox One even more than that XD
For sure the 360 just looked powerful. I like the aesthetic of the PS3 but the infamous Spider-Man font was really tacky and it looked almost fragile while the 360 was this big tower of green, big analogue stick energy.
I hung onto the PS2 long enough for CRT TV's to get challenging to find in shops, so I remember getting a 360 and a cheap LCD but even then one of my first games for the console: The Simpsons Game looked better than the actual cartoon did.
I've never formally ranked them, but the 360 might also be my favourite console of all time. I was fortunate to have all three (360, PS3, Wii) during that era, and it by far got the most play. As you note, they may have eventually lost the sales war, but the 360 won the battle of the hearts and minds. Sadly, it's been all downhill for Xbox since then.
Considering you can pick them up for as little as $2 NZD (as we detailed here: https://pixelfix.substack.com/p/scoring-gear-2-xbox-360) and the games haven't rocketed up either, the 360 is an easy recommend for anyone wanting a painless and cheap entry point into retro gaming.
I also managed to own them all around when they were present and in my experience, there was a 5-6 month window where we all played Wii Sports daily, then I tried a few of the Wii Sonic games and Red Steel, we realised how bad most non-Nintendo IP's played on the Wii but were bored of Wii Sports so it sat there unused.
I bought the PS3 purely for Killzone, Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid 4. It has lots of good games but it just cannot match the 360 in my opinion.
Oh boy and how sharply downhill did it go... expect some colourful language in the final episode, I'm still bitter about how that console and those franchises turned out.
I remember reading this! A great article and I loved to see some restoration work done.
A great read and I love your scoring! My G.O.A.T. also. Did have the red ring of death once but it was fixed free of charge. I was so gutted when it happened that I immediately drove to Woolies to buy another so I could continue my game without waiting, ended up with two units. So many good gaming memories and many of my favourite ever games Bioshock, Dead Space, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Modern Warfare, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, I could go on. Just a top gaming experience period.
Glad you enjoyed it! I was lucky enough to not get red-ringed but even still, I replaced my 360 a couple of times back in the day but am now using one that hasn't had any issues so far; its vents could do with a clean but I don't use it often enough to worry too much.
Honestly, I can't even begin to list how many games I loved for the 360 or how many classics there are, I didn't even mention Crackdown, or Supreme Commander: still my favourite RTS, or the Civilization Revolution or Total Miner, Castle Miner Z and any of those other XBLA Indie classics. We'll never get those times back but damn, I'm glad I experienced them.
Yes, so many classics. I still have some of the original discs, no 360 any more but I can’t bear to get rid of them for what they represent. Have a Series X but it’s not the same, good times indeed but different times also. Love your retrospective series btw 👍
I'm thinking of ways to keep it going as of now, I know these series are quite popular but I don't actually own every Sega console to make one for them (missing the Master System) and I've just never cared for PlayStation apart from the PS2. That being said, plenty of video game series retrospectives planned with Halo coming soon.
I think one thing that helped the 360 a lot in terms of third party titles was not just that Wii was underpowered and PS3 was an architectural mess, but also that they caught the tail end of PC still being considered a finicky hobbyist option. Steam was on the rise but wasn't nearly as omnipresent as it would become, hardware management was all over the place, and it was sometimes a crapshoot whether a game would work out of the box or even at all after hours of troubleshooting, patch hunting, and tweaking. Ironically, all the raised expectations of permanent high-speed connectivity and the consolidation of digital distribution that the next console generation would lean on also meant that PC could become almost as consistent, while still being more open and capable - consoles lost their main edge, and had to compete with desperate exclusivity, 'couch appeal,' and a sad arms race of gimmicks. Or that's my take as a smug PC elitist.
The 360 was my first non-Nintendo console. I actually earned one by submitting a bunch of solutions for my calculus textbook on cramster.com. I have fond memories of playing Halo 3, GoW, Oblivion, Portal, Half Life 2, and Dark Souls on it.
I had a 360, but it was stolen in a burglary along with about 2/3 of my games. Being far more of a PC gamer by then anyway, and secondarily a retro gamer, I sold the rest of my 360 games, rather than replace the console. Also being a PC gamer meant that I refused to pay for online multiplayer and have never been comfortable with playing FPSes with a gamepad, so I didn't own Halo 3, for example. To this day I don't really get why Halo was a big deal. I loved Gears of War though, my favorite game on the console. To me it controlled far more naturally on a gamepad than a true FPS did, but maybe that's just a personal bias, that I enjoyed the game enough to overlook the controls.
And if I'm being honest, I feel a certain anti-nostalgia about this period in my life. I was learning to navigate adulthood. My apartment was burglarized twice in one year and shortly after the second break-in, my girlfriend at the time dumped me. The Great Recession was going on and I was working in the financial industry; I managed to keep my job but my company had multiple rounds of layoffs.
If I try to set aside the feelings and look at it objectively, the 360/PS3 era strikes me as the point in time when a lot of interesting things were happening in games; it was basically the last console generation that represented a major technological leap forward, which also means that it basically marks the beginning of the current era.
But on the downside, one thing the modern era is marked by is the collapse in differentiation among console libraries. I'm not sure if this has been measured objectively, but to me this generation marks the point in time where we could perhaps first say the libraries are more undifferentiated than they are differentiated. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to study this objectively, when that threshold was crossed.
So without the benefit of nostalgia like you're describing, it's hard for me to have a strong opinion here on 360 vs. PS3, the way battles like SNES vs. Genesis (vs. DOS!) and PS1 vs. N64 (vs. Windows!) bring out intense opinions to this day, and the hardware there has very clear strengths and weaknesses relative to its competitor.
A wonderfully objective and unbiased review 😂 Still a good read.
I only owned the original Xbox and never went back to it so missed the legendary 360 era. From the outside though, I could tell that Microsoft's one key success was their prescience in online services, they somehow absolutely nailed that on the head, making it their killer feature while their competitors played catch-up.