When something is 20 years old it’s easy for memories to focus on the best things. The Xbox 360, Microsoft’s best attempt at shaking up the games industry, wasn’t perfect (hello RROD, hello a pivot to Kinect), but it’s a console that for many is remembered as their console - the one that arrived at just the right time and offered exactly the right experiences.
We’ve cast our minds back to that time, when unbelievably PlayStation was often playing second fiddle, Xbox Live was booming, and the future for consoles looked great.
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The Xbox 360 really benefited from Sony being councieted and charging way too much for the PS3. Interesting actually how all three kinda peaked around the same time in terms of pure hardware sales: Xbox with the 360, PS with the PS2, and Nintendo with the Wii and DS (total sales of both far out pacing the singular Switch). I can understand why Xbox tried to reach new audiences with the Xbox One… too bad they failed miserably. The Xbox 360 is the ideal traditional game console even with all its flaws, and it served Xbox well going up against the initially overpriced PS3.
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All they had to do was just make an Xbox 360 2.0 and they would have won last gen easily in the US and UK, where they had a massive market share advantage during the 360 years, they threw all of that away in one day, honestly it doesn’t surprise me that it happened looking at how Xbox is managed today as well, it just doesn’t look like they hire the best people for these jobs, the Xbox 360 was a perfect storm, they had the right people, a massive franchise at it’s peak and the best price and hardware.
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Honestly I understand it even today. The console market had started peaking back then. I mean the PS4 didn’t do that much better stacked up to other Playstation consoles final sales. Microsoft wanted to evolve Xbox into the center of home entertainment to grow more. Neat idea. Terrible execution. I can slightly appreciate the risk, but ultimately it cost them both the traditional console market and inadvertently cost the entire industry the transition consoles needed for (maybe) until now. Sony took advantage of the Xbox One failure and doubled down on a traditional strategy. Microsoft got scared to make the same mistake with the Xbox Series making those consoles really “safe” at first and not marketing much outside of core gamers. It is what it is. Hopefully they don’t also trip at the execution line again this time.
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We will see but I will be honest with you, I don’t trust them to get it right, they always seem to just step on their own shoes over and over, especially now that very clearly people on top are making the final decisions, I do trust them to make a very powerful system that will be awesome to use, Series X 5 years later is still amazing and currently I don’t feel like I need a new generation, while last gen I was dying for a new generation or an upgrade 3 years in and thankfully we got Xbox One X.
But that system will probably be 1000 dollars while the PS6 is 600 dollars, I just know they will do something stupid like that.
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Honestly with the PS5 Pro at $700 for an all digital console and the Switch 2 practically costing the launch price of the Xbox & PS5, those are somewhat low-ball optimistic numbers price wise.
At this point I think the future of console gaming specifically is dependent on Xbox getting it right. That’s not even really me being dramatic. I think consoles desperately need a path forward. Which they don’t really right now. And we can’t take another Xbox One level setback. If they fail and PlayStation doubles down again then we’ll just see the market to continue to contract, prices raise, and who knows what else as a result. The game industry itself really needs to reach new gamers and facilitate more game sales (the oversaturation and fight for the attention economy).
Regardless, yeah, the whole “next gen” is somewhat questionable now with how game development has kinda standardized. Honestly the Xbox One is still being serviced with more than enough new games to keep a casual gamer happy. I don’t think gamers will need new hardware for a long time coming. Which in my opinion puts more pressure on Xbox to evolve and offer something that justifies upgrading. If the PS6 is really just a PS5 Pro Pro, I don’t really care. That’s just me personally. I need something a lot more than just power to justify new hardware now in this reality where I know that in two years the current consoles out will still be really powerful pieces of tech that will be supported with most if not all gaming experiences.
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I agree with this, I think Xbox is coming with a console that can access Steam and other PC storefronts, it will be more expensive but it will give you far more options.
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