I will never, ever understand why the Xbox didn't just go with 1, 2, 3, etc. Even after the 360, why not do 720, 1080, etc? after the xbox ONE, why not xbox TWO, THREE, etc? Why go with Series S and X? it makes no sense - literally beyond my comprehension. so, going back to the article, xbox died for me the minute the xbox one came out. the name alone was indicative of a rot and disfunction beyond comprehension.
The established wisdom is that it is because the Xbox was one generation "behind" the PS. They didn't want to call the second Xbox an "Xbox 2" because people would assume it was intended to be a competitor to the PS2, when in fact it was a competitor to the PS3 - hence, "Xbox 360".
They went off the deep end after that. Xbox One was a stupid name, as is the current alphabet soup. They should have gone from Xbox 360 to Xbox 4. Yes, it would be a little embarrassing to copy your competitor's versioning, but that's a small price for consumer clarity.
I imagine the going Xbox 360 -> Xbox 720 would just have been asking to people to joke about it being 720p (even if not actually, the picture quality joke basically writes itself).
The solution though was obviously not the brainworm reasoning that got us the Xbox One (nobody was going to call their console 'The One', cf. 'X-bone'). Your alternative of going straight to the Xbox 4 would probably have been considered a loss by the executives, but I imagine it at least wouldn't have been made fun of beyond the release period, since it would have been clear why they did the change.
The people in charge of such decisions were too stupid or self-assured to realize or worry about such obvious problems.
There is no meritocracy. These billion dollar brands and endeavors, that have thousands of livelihoods tied up in them, are managed by absolutely brain dead bozos.
(a) they wanted to make it hard to know what console was the newest or oldest to promote users to just throw up their arms and buy the newest XBox?
(b) they wanted each one to be very unique and different sounding so they would never get confused with one another, but their sequence is difficult to understand
I mean has Microsoft ever released a decent consumer product naming or versioning system? I could name so many bad examples I cant even think of one good one.
xbox went up in flames with the xbox one, which was around about when microsoft as a whole started to get run by business types that had no idea what they were doing whatsoever. 2013 was when xbox permanently lost the console 'war'
I doubt the war was truly lost on that faithful day in 2013. It was still possible to save, and Phil Spencer even did a decent amount of work trying to reclaim the goodwill of people by pushing for things like backwards compatibility for previous gen Xboxes.
I think the larger problem is just that Xbox doesn't really know what itself is. Sony has the same problem to a lesser extent. None of the current gen consoles have any exclusives of note. Sony have a few, while Microsoft have basically none. That alone gives Sony a big advantage. Meanwhile, in the PS4 days, people would buy one just for Bloodborne, while in the 360 days, they'd buy one just for Halo. Now Halo is on PC, so no longer an exclusive, and while the same goes for Sony, they still retain a bit of a default console status, which helps draw in the couch console crown who aren't interested in the PC. If you want a traditional console experience, you buy a PS5, since there's no real reason to buy the Xbox even if you did care to compare them side by side.
This is anecdata point of one, but I bought the xbox hoping to play split screen with my kids and to play some more of the ghost recon franchise which I last played on the original xbox. My kid got into the latest ghost recon on the xbox, but I don't like sandboxes so I never played it. The split screen on xbox never materialized for us, I just couldn't find any good titles.
I ended up getting a steam deck which is just amazing and the kids ended up on on tablets (minecraft/roblox) and on PCs (arma and such).
For split screen we ended up occasionally connecting the steam deck to the tv and re-pairing Xbox controllers to it.
I can absolutely relate. I bought a series x at launch with the exact same idea, and have had the same disappointment. Minecraft and Borderlands have been about the only solid split screen titles on this whole generation. That being said, I do feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the hardware. It just didn't play out like I was hoping. Also, I agree with the article's complaint about gamepass. I had ultimate starting when I bought the console in 2020. I don't remember what I paid at the beginning, but I think it was like $8/month. They lost me when they just upped it from $20-$30. I mean, $20 was already a stretch, but a 50% increase on top of that? Bye.
Quite hard to find couch coop these days. People play mostly online. Overcooked, It Takes Two, Larian studios games are the ones we’ve found that we enjoy as a couple. But realistically only Overcooked is drop in arcade like playable.
Though one vertical shooter “sky force reloaded” is super fun in the old style.
The ONLY split-screen games I've found of any use on Xbox are the various silly cooking/moving games (which are fun), Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and ... that's basically it.
I find it comical that the Switch was completely ignored, which just means to me that Nintendo finally won the console wars while the other two fight for second place. VGCharts has this for lifetime sales for the current consoles in the USA.
Switch 1 (57,530,683)
PlayStation 5 - (33,012,035)
Xbox Series X|S - (20,764,129)
Switch 2 -(4,243,125)
Nintendo isn't really competing in the same space. You buy Nintendo if you want their exclusive games, otherwise not. For everything else, you get to pick between PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Steam deck, etc
I remember getting an Xbox One and being excited about the concept of it being the center for entertainment in my house. The marketing promise was that it would integrate with TVs and music and make those things better in ways that were sort of nebulous and not super well defined, and that unfortunately came at the expense of it delivering a good gaming experience.
The first red flag should have been Microsoft trying to push the weird metro/UWP interface that it had with news, the store, movies and a tv guide, and more versus a library of games, and then of course all of the bad PR around Kinect and the DRM. It didn’t have backwards compatibility at launch and most of the games were things that were already out on 360, but for some reason we needed to re-buy.
The game experience never improved and the home entertainment thing never materialized, so you were just left with something that did exactly what the 360 did and duplicated your existing DVR/cable box.
The X/S wasn’t better. First you had to fight scalpers to get one, and then my first experience with it was browsing the store and seeing that I had to pick between buying the Xbox one version of games or the X/S version. The entire thing was built around some new revolutionary concept of streaming cloud games, which didn’t work. Games are FPS capped and if you install them locally they require 15 of the 45 minutes you have to game to download updates that should happen while the thing sleeps. It got slightly better over time, but juxtaposed with my pc and steam it was such an unpolished experience.
What it really comes down to for me is that it’s a gaming console that tries to do a bunch of stuff I don’t care about and fails at the one thing I do care about it doing (playing games). There’s a larger commentary here about Microsoft, but this isn’t unique to them. I should have been a lifelong console buyer; instead I will probably not buy another one because for the past two generations the experience has been awful, and whatever they come out with next is going to be packed with a bunch of streaming junk and AI and other stuff I don’t want, and will not do the thing I do want in any way that competes with the old faithful PC and steam.
I don't really want this future, but is there any reason why Sony hasn't just embedded Playstation into their TVs? It seems obvious to me that they could persuade people to buy their TV over others this way.
The controller design/feel and the more seamless/intuitive online play & party handling kept me on the Xbox side of the fence for a looooooong time.
That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are 100% on Steam.
>and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller
If you can stand to move away from an Xbox controller (they're the only ones without gyro still) and learn gyro/flick stick, it levels the playing field a lot more. Flick stick's instant turns even give it some advantages over KB+M.
8BitDo's controllers are the best-supported on Steam at the moment, with gyro, analog triggers, and back buttons all fully working at the same time now in DInput mode. I use the Pro 2, but if you prefer Xbox layout, you may want one of their Ultimate controllers. Don't buy the ones that are licensed Xbox controllers as I believe they then don't have gyro. Many have the Nintendo button labels, but Steam has a toggle to use the Xbox layout.
I really hate UI button mismatch in steam. I grew up on PS controllers, I couldn't even tell you the xbox layout from memory. I was once forced to use a Switch controller (was traveling, forgot my main) while the in-screen UI was XBox. I had so much trouble at first, especially since the xbox and switch controllers share button names but even the "x" made me think of the playstation x. Just some musings.
Some games now put you in matchmaking pools based on input device, like Overwatch from a update a few months ago. In OW, you have a Controller pool and a Mouse and Keyboard pool. You confirm which device you want to use for gameplay and other inputs are disabled. Although I do think they don't let controller on pc play in comp.
I meant the other way. I would switch over to playing something like Destiny on Steam on my PC and just use the Windows Xbox app for joining chat parties with my friends, but if I am playing on PC using a Controller, I’m going to end up matched with a ton of cheaters and be in mixed MnK and controller lobbies. By continuing to play on Xbox I mostly avoid those issues, save for PlayStation players using a Cronus or Xim.
However, in writing this I’ve realized that this is really only a problem for me when playing Destiny and only when I’m playing PvP. As the player population continues to die and I move on to other games or mostly PvE content in Destiny, then I’m not going to care anymore and I can switch entirely over to PC.
On the one hand, that’s going to be pretty convenient. On the other, it’s kind of a sad realization as it marks the end of a very long era of console gaming for me stretching all the way back to the NES.
My son has a Switch, but other than that my kids have only ever known using a PC as a “console”. Their play room has a relatively compact PC (13th Gen. Intel CPU & ARC A770 dGPU) connected to a TV that just runs Steam and Batocera with 4x USB 8BitDo controllers attached.
By all appearances, until about the last year or so, I would look like an ideal customer demographic for Microsoft. I’ve purchased every single gaming platform they’ve ever produced, but I’m thiiiiiiiiis close to having migrated entirely away, and it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of happened a little bit at a time. :-/
Readit News
They went off the deep end after that. Xbox One was a stupid name, as is the current alphabet soup. They should have gone from Xbox 360 to Xbox 4. Yes, it would be a little embarrassing to copy your competitor's versioning, but that's a small price for consumer clarity.
The solution though was obviously not the brainworm reasoning that got us the Xbox One (nobody was going to call their console 'The One', cf. 'X-bone'). Your alternative of going straight to the Xbox 4 would probably have been considered a loss by the executives, but I imagine it at least wouldn't have been made fun of beyond the release period, since it would have been clear why they did the change.
The people in charge of such decisions were too stupid or self-assured to realize or worry about such obvious problems.
There is no meritocracy. These billion dollar brands and endeavors, that have thousands of livelihoods tied up in them, are managed by absolutely brain dead bozos.
(a) they wanted to make it hard to know what console was the newest or oldest to promote users to just throw up their arms and buy the newest XBox?
(b) they wanted each one to be very unique and different sounding so they would never get confused with one another, but their sequence is difficult to understand
Same with 7 -> 8 -> (@.@) -> 10 -> 11
Let's not oversell their incompetence, is slightly higher then average but not singularly bad
I think the larger problem is just that Xbox doesn't really know what itself is. Sony has the same problem to a lesser extent. None of the current gen consoles have any exclusives of note. Sony have a few, while Microsoft have basically none. That alone gives Sony a big advantage. Meanwhile, in the PS4 days, people would buy one just for Bloodborne, while in the 360 days, they'd buy one just for Halo. Now Halo is on PC, so no longer an exclusive, and while the same goes for Sony, they still retain a bit of a default console status, which helps draw in the couch console crown who aren't interested in the PC. If you want a traditional console experience, you buy a PS5, since there's no real reason to buy the Xbox even if you did care to compare them side by side.
Deleted Comment
I ended up getting a steam deck which is just amazing and the kids ended up on on tablets (minecraft/roblox) and on PCs (arma and such).
For split screen we ended up occasionally connecting the steam deck to the tv and re-pairing Xbox controllers to it.
Though one vertical shooter “sky force reloaded” is super fun in the old style.
Switch 1 (57,530,683) PlayStation 5 - (33,012,035) Xbox Series X|S - (20,764,129) Switch 2 -(4,243,125)
Deleted Comment
The first red flag should have been Microsoft trying to push the weird metro/UWP interface that it had with news, the store, movies and a tv guide, and more versus a library of games, and then of course all of the bad PR around Kinect and the DRM. It didn’t have backwards compatibility at launch and most of the games were things that were already out on 360, but for some reason we needed to re-buy.
The game experience never improved and the home entertainment thing never materialized, so you were just left with something that did exactly what the 360 did and duplicated your existing DVR/cable box.
The X/S wasn’t better. First you had to fight scalpers to get one, and then my first experience with it was browsing the store and seeing that I had to pick between buying the Xbox one version of games or the X/S version. The entire thing was built around some new revolutionary concept of streaming cloud games, which didn’t work. Games are FPS capped and if you install them locally they require 15 of the 45 minutes you have to game to download updates that should happen while the thing sleeps. It got slightly better over time, but juxtaposed with my pc and steam it was such an unpolished experience.
What it really comes down to for me is that it’s a gaming console that tries to do a bunch of stuff I don’t care about and fails at the one thing I do care about it doing (playing games). There’s a larger commentary here about Microsoft, but this isn’t unique to them. I should have been a lifelong console buyer; instead I will probably not buy another one because for the past two generations the experience has been awful, and whatever they come out with next is going to be packed with a bunch of streaming junk and AI and other stuff I don’t want, and will not do the thing I do want in any way that competes with the old faithful PC and steam.
They did try it once before.
it's not like sony never gave it a shot (ref. KDL22PX300)
That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are 100% on Steam.
If you can stand to move away from an Xbox controller (they're the only ones without gyro still) and learn gyro/flick stick, it levels the playing field a lot more. Flick stick's instant turns even give it some advantages over KB+M.
8BitDo's controllers are the best-supported on Steam at the moment, with gyro, analog triggers, and back buttons all fully working at the same time now in DInput mode. I use the Pro 2, but if you prefer Xbox layout, you may want one of their Ultimate controllers. Don't buy the ones that are licensed Xbox controllers as I believe they then don't have gyro. Many have the Nintendo button labels, but Steam has a toggle to use the Xbox layout.
Deleted Comment
However, in writing this I’ve realized that this is really only a problem for me when playing Destiny and only when I’m playing PvP. As the player population continues to die and I move on to other games or mostly PvE content in Destiny, then I’m not going to care anymore and I can switch entirely over to PC.
On the one hand, that’s going to be pretty convenient. On the other, it’s kind of a sad realization as it marks the end of a very long era of console gaming for me stretching all the way back to the NES.
My son has a Switch, but other than that my kids have only ever known using a PC as a “console”. Their play room has a relatively compact PC (13th Gen. Intel CPU & ARC A770 dGPU) connected to a TV that just runs Steam and Batocera with 4x USB 8BitDo controllers attached.
By all appearances, until about the last year or so, I would look like an ideal customer demographic for Microsoft. I’ve purchased every single gaming platform they’ve ever produced, but I’m thiiiiiiiiis close to having migrated entirely away, and it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of happened a little bit at a time. :-/