Xbox 360

Even Chris Chan hates the Xbox 360, and she bought Playstation Move. I don’t hate it but I'm not fond of it either. In April 2009, my girlfriend at the time bought one. It was dead by December because she made the mistake of playing The Sims 3 on it. I don’t understand how the hardware problems were so prominent that long after it came out. Whatever the case, the second model fared better. This time, it was my brother who’d bought one. I’d end up playing a few games on both of these. I never had one of my own because it seemed dumb.

Xbox 360 definitely had ideas, I'll give it that. Achievements being a decent one. Sure, they kind of pigeon-hole you, but they’re fun and you can turn off the notification if you don’t care. Xbox 360 was the first console to truly have a go at digital distribution. The original Xbox very lightly dipped its toes into that realm, but you needed a disk in order to actually play your downloaded game. Here, it was built into the UI. This meant that you could play your downloaded game any time you wanted. Near the end of it's life if your disk drive died, you weren't stuck with a paperweight. You could simply download games instead. The controller was now wireless, and its button placement improved dramatically. forward thinking design like using AA batteries to power the controller means people will be able to play it long into the future without regard for proprietary, long out of production battery replacement. Too bad the main hardware is so terrible.

Do I need to discuss the 360's hardware flaws? If you were breathing at the time, you heard about this. The internet in 2007 was basically just "This is Sparta" memes and complaints about the 360's hardware. I vividly remember watching some satellite channel where people could comment on music videos live over text message. Even there, people would bitch about their Xboxes dying. The problem stemmed from poor heat management. Long and short, the consoles board would bow pop several solder joints. With electronics, even one bad solder joint is enough to kill something.

You can see the size of the icon representing the game inserted into the console become less and less of a focal point as the updates progress. Lovely.

The worst thing about the Xbox 360 was the UI. It changed constantly and got progressively worse. The initial UI was pretty cool for the three days I witnessed it. Referred to as “Blades”, everything was concise and well categorized. When the Xbox was connected to the internet for the first time, that all changed. Suddenly, we were dealing with “NXE” or New Xbox Experience. The concise design gave way to an absolute mess with an emphasis on Avatars. These things were Miis that you’d eventually have to pay money to dress up. Charming. Finally, they ditched the Avatar emphasis and further fucked up the UI with a third revision. This time, everything resembled Windows 8. Does anyone reading this like Windows 8? No? How about advertisements? Because everything within this final UI was an ad. Keep in mind: Microsoft had already sold you the game, the internet subscription, and the console. Why the fuck were there advertisements in the UI? I’m still insulted by it 13 years later and I didn't spend a dime on any of this crap.

Microsoft said "Mii too!"

Of the three consoles that existed at the time, there was a massive power gap. You had the Wii, which was around the same power as the GameCube. Across the aisle, the 360 and PS3 resided. The PS3 had no games (MGS4 notwithstanding) until 2010 or later. The By late 2010, the 360 had devolved into a homunculus of stolen ideas. The 360 had the better controller, but games seemed to run better on PS3. At least sometimes. I'm of the opinion that the entire console generation was a bust. Microsoft did the best they could. They all did, in fact. Compared to the PS3 and Wii, 360 had the best digital distribution setup. The fucked up thing about this is that they had a considerable head start and they squandered it by making the Xbox One into pariah. I wouldn't accept an Xbox One for free after the shit they tried to pull with it at that reveal. Many agreed, and everyone migrated to PS4 and built their digital libraries on that platform. You know why PS5 sold so well? It's not that it has games. It's because people invested hundreds in digital releases and they don't want to lose them. That's why I bought a Switch 2. It's forgone conclusion for people. Microsoft doesn't fucking have that despite popularizing the premise.

Halo was prominent on the 360. Among them all, Halo Wars was the best. I'm not gonna discuss it though because I forgot it existed until I started writing this. I know It had no real impact, sadly. I never played Halo 4, nor did I play Halo: Reach. This whole thing ends with Halo 3. And it's a whimper, not a bang.