AlienLion writes:
"In terms of importance, most of the Xbox One features that were announced at the May 21st unveiling paled in comparison to whatever was implied at the event or right after. Really, as far as a ‘grand reveal of a next generation technology” goes, the bullet points were rather underwhelming: there was the TV thingamajig, which didn’t do anything, considering that you still need a cable subscription and a cable box to use it; a bunch of vocal channel switching and other oral stuff, which frankly, I thought Kinect could do already (notice how that hasn’t persuaded me to purchase one); some sinister NFL alliance, between Microsoft and the Goldmember; and some Live improvements that didn’t require new console hardware. And what does Microsoft want in return for it all?"
The Xbox 360 launched in North America 18 years ago, and is now officially old enough to buy you a drink in Europe.
Great platform, and many of its games (not bc) still hold up well to this day. Like the PS3, I keep a 360 hooked up for those games you can't play any other way.
The last gasp of greatness from XBox, you are missed, except the RROD that was lame, but amazing exclusives until the Kinect dropped.
I really enjoyed my X360, some great exclusives on it. Used to play the shit out ot Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, two masterpieces
It's been 20 years to the day since Xbox Live brought online play to consoles.
I remember when Live turned five and they had special edition controllers made and everything. Kind of wished they would do that again for the 20th.
Happy Birthday. OG XBL (and later 360 XBL) really revolutionized online gaming on console.
Never understood the obsession with live...but I was gaming online on PC so not sure too much of what live did that the PlayStation didn't.
I had a PS2 and it's online experience was fine but it didn't have the same level of polish voice chat never worked for me but I was trying to play from Australia where not many people played PS2 online to the point where many devs simply dropped the online mode from the pal version.
That's not all PS2 games mind you there were plenty that worked perfectly but it was more on the dev and not the platform
During that era I also played a fairly large amount on online PC games and they were undoubtedly better than both systems. PS2 from functionality and Xbox because it was free
Playing my friends original Xbox it was a really polished experience it felt robust yet simple things just worked there was zero config.
Yeah but the time ps3 came the experience was the same on both based on what I played...not too much online though to be honest. But I do think that the xbox did help bring online into the console space a lot. As well as PC games to consoles.
Today would of been the perfect day to drop halo 2 the original bc version free on gwg.... If only
Xbox Live 1.0, the first instance of online servers for the original Xbox, is set to return via Insignia, a free third-party service that's currently compatible with 20 titles, such as Call of Duty: Finest Hour and Counter-Strike.
Lobbies, Matchmaking, Leaderboards, Voice Chat, Content Downloads, Friends Lists, all set to return
Halo 2 set to come later as it requires additional services to run online.
Beta sign ups available now with beta launch of 11/15/22. Certain features of XBL will roll out over the future.
Great read. I particular enjoyed the reference to cloud gaming: MS borrowed this picture from NASA to show what bullsh** looks like from space. lol, classic.