The first time I ever heard of Xbox was from one of my cousins. He told me I should get one, but I scoffed at him responding “I will stick with my PlayStation 2.” One day while in a Circuit City, yes, I’m old, there was an Xbox setup with the newly released Ninja Gaiden. They had already replaced the classic Duke controller (which I was not a fan of) with the new sleeker S controller. After playing it for a while, I decided to pick up a special edition translucent green Halo Xbox, Ninja Gaiden, and this random Star Wars game that looked fun. That random Star Wars game, Knights of the Old Republic, ended up being one of my favorite games of all time and one of the reasons I fell in love with my Xbox. Being able to save games without a memory card and having a built-in ethernet port included felt like the future. In many ways, Xbox felt like a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, which was way ahead of its time.
A NEW WAY TO CONNECT
I can still remember getting my Xbox Live kit after it was released. The kit included a headset to communicate with the people that you played with, which for me was a new world of connection. Moving forward Xbox Live would become a vital part of staying connected with old friends, family, and new friends that I made from playing on my Xbox. When the Xbox 360 was launched, I remember getting the Live pack that included a camera and a digital copy of UNO. I spent many nights making friends, and enemies while playing UNO. Let’s not even start with nights of Halo 2 and NBA 2K. Xbox Live made me want to only play on Xbox because that’s where my friends were. It was like nothing I had ever experienced.
LONG LIVE THE BLADES
The Xbox 360 era of gaming is still some of my favorite moments I’ve ever had in gaming. The iconic blade system that was there at launch seemed so revolutionary for a console. With features like downloadable demos, custom soundtracks, wireless controllers, backward compatibility, and the game-changing Achievement system, I spent many hours on my 360. The 360 launched a year before PlayStation’s next console, the PlayStation 3 so when it came out it was impossible to get. I remember the first time I played a 360. A friend of mine had brought it over along with Call of Duty 2. By the time I finished the first mission, I knew I had to have one. The 360 library included Halo 3, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Gears of War and so many other great games that easily made it my favorite generation of gaming. I must also admit that the original Kinect was a lot of fun, even though it was more than a little gimmicky being that it was Xbox’s response to the Wii’s motion controls.
SEEING RED
With the Xbox 360 Microsoft had successfully convinced me that Xbox was the place to be, and all your friends were there too. It was all good until I started hearing about people getting the Red Ring of Death. If you aren’t familiar with the Red Ring, it was when a 360 would overheat and stop working and the front of the console would flash a red ring. For what it’s worth, my console never got the Red Ring, but a lot of my friends’ consoles did. For Microsoft’s part, they did repair those consoles for free once it became a widespread issue, but the damage was done. A lot of my friends were starting to migrate over to the reinvigorated PlayStation 3, which had a terrible launch but had been releasing hit after hit. PlayStation had even made their own version of Achievements called Trophies, which in some ways improved upon what Achievements did. At the time I played both consoles, but still preferred my 360, but it started to feel like the death of an era.
BUT WAIT, IT ALSO PLAYS GAMES!
By now the tv, tv, tv Xbox E3 presentation has gone down in infamy. Saying that the launch of the Xbox One was a disaster would be an understatement. Things like no game sharing required online connection, and the mandatory Kinect 2 pretty much sealed the fate of the “one box to rule them all.” I must admit for me I thought that some of the concepts were cool, and in retrospect, some of the things that bothered consumers are commonplace now. Don’t believe me? Try playing a game on Xbox or PlayStation without an internet connection or sharing a digital version of one of your games. To add insult to injury, the once plentiful flow of quality games was reduced to a drip. Not to say that there weren’t good games on the system like the always solid Forza Motorsport, but they were few and far between. Even the once-innovative Halo started to lose its luster. Games like Rise Son of Rome and Quantum Break tried to breathe innovation into the console, but it seemed everything Xbox tried barely made an impact. Those two games specifically, I wish they had invested more into them. They were solid ideas, just half-baked. I still had hope in the ecosystem, but it was quickly starting to fade away.
THE NETFLIX OF GAMING
The Red Ring of Death followed by the launch of the Xbox One felt like the one-two punch that would knock Xbox out for good. Then seemingly out of nowhere, here comes Game Pass, a 100-plus games for one low monthly price. Suddenly Xbox seemed to be turning things around. Just like they did with Xbox Live and Achievements, they created something that completely changed the industry. With later additions of Cloud Gaming, Game Pass for PC, and the addition of EA Access when you upgrade to Game Pass Ultimate, it seemed like Xbox had risen from the dead and was back in the fight. Best of all, first-party games launched directly into Game Pass on day one. As Games with Gold started to release more and more obscure games, Game Pass was introducing me to games I loved that I’d never heard of and probably would’ve tried otherwise.
ACQUISITION SEASON
Like any subscription service, Game Pass needed constant content to keep it going. Microsoft started acquiring studios with its biggest purchase coming in 2021 when they purchased ZeniMax Media which included Bethesda Studios, id, and Arkane Studios, and game series such as Fallout, Doom, and Dishonored. Due to contractual agreements prior to the purchase, ZeniMax’s next two games would be one-year PlayStation exclusives, but after a year they would drop directly into Game Pass. Just like that, things seemed to be back on the right track. And the message was heard loud and clear, next year is the year.
WOW, SO MANY TERAFLOPS
With the release of the Xbox Series X and S (seriously who names these things), Microsoft’s “most powerful console ever made” seemed poised to fight for the crown. It finally seemed like Xbox was back, wait Halo won’t be there at launch? No problem, with all these studios we are going to be getting tons of new games right?! In 2021 it seemed like things were falling into place, we got the game of the year Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, and Halo Infinite. Halo felt like Halo for the first time in what seemed like forever. Everything was coming together, what could go wrong? When the calendar flipped to 2022, we started to get hit with many game delays and setbacks. Boom, we found ourselves back in another drought while Sony was dropping hit after hit on their PlayStation platform. Did I make the wrong choice? By this time many of my friends were already on PlayStation 4 or 5 and I was starting to think I may have chosen the wrong side.
A REDFALL FROM GRACE
From the initial previews of Redfall, I knew it probably wasn’t going to be a game for me, but as an Xbox fan, I was eager to see what the reception of the game would be. Not going to rehash the problems with RedFall’s release, but boy was I disappointed. Even though I had never planned to play the game, it was yet another instance of Xbox not delivering on what they promised. Crackdown 3, the initial reveal of Halo Infinite, the cancelation of Scale Bound, and the lengthy delay of Starfield are all examples of Xbox not delivering. Couple those with the drought of games and lack of big first-party exclusives, Redfall’s horrible launch caused me to lose faith in my favorite gaming ecosystem and I started to doubt that Xbox would ever regain its former glory.
A STARFIELD OF HOPE
For many Starfield is the last hope for Xbox. If nothing else, Nintendo has shown us that console capabilities aren’t as important as having great, not good, or okay, but great games to play. At one time it seemed along with games Xbox was focused on community, that is when I really fell in love with the ecosystem. Over the years it seems like Xbox has slowly lost its identity and has at times been focused on entertainment, console capabilities, and now, acquisitions. I am not going to get too much into the Activision Blizzard drama, but I will say I have never been too crazy about it. In addition to me not having faith that Xbox can properly handle the studios they’ve already acquired, during this process they seemingly missed out on the opportunity to purchase Eidos and its properties which to me seems like a much better fit. Starfield may be Xbox’s last chance to rebound, followed by a consistent stream of quality titles to help restore faith in the company. As a child, money was the limiting factor of what I could play, now as an adult money has been replaced by time. I want to invest in a gaming ecosystem that is worth my time and money. An ecosystem that has things I am excited to play when I have time to sit back and relax. Xbox, I used to love you and I still do, but as a community we need you to do better.
Love,
An Xbox fan