Xbox brand retrospective / reminiscing

[Twiztid Elf]

Alright guys, bear with me. This is going to be a bit wanky and self indulgent.

I've been a bit split on whether to bother typing this up and posting it, but it's pouring down outside, I've been cleaning up and found the list of Xbox games that I wrote earlier in the year to underpin this post.

After the Xbox Games Showcase on the 24 July, when it dawned on me that the Xbox is no longer a brand for me, I wasn't lying when I said that it was a sad moment for me.
This thread is just a bit of a trip down memory lane, highlighting some of my favourite memories with the Xbox brand.
I'll be posting lists of some of my favourite games I played on Xbox consoles at the end.

Back in 2002, as a Sega fanboy, it was an obvious transition from the Dreamcast to the OG Xbox.
- So many Sega games came across.
- Bizarre Creations racer on launch.
- The hype around this "Halo" FPS game.
- Bitterness toward Sony and Playstation (and EA).
- The most powerful hardware.
- The promise of proper online play for consoles.
- Hard drive built in as standard.
- Exec dreamteam of Peter Moore, Seamus Blackley, J Allard, Robbie Bach, and Ed Fries to make it happen.
- The technical backing of Microsoft to deliver on the promises.

And the OG Xbox sure did deliver. In a big way.
Project Gotham Racing and Halo on day one. Then the hits just kept coming.
Getting the Xbox Live kit, and doing so many laggy laps of Mugello on the MotoGP demo. All those laggy messes at that first hairpin.
Then when Project Gotham Racing 2 hit, holy shit. Spending so many fun hours with some of you fuckers on St Basils, Nurbergring, etc.
Good times. Good memories.
By the time the OG Xbox gen ended, the OG had hosted 3 of my GOTYs (two of them XB exclusives), and one game that's still in my personal top ten GOAT (PGR2).

Then the 360 hit in 2005. MS had generated enough brand awareness and goodwill to make a push as a serious contender. Halo3 just helped drive it home.
Then of course poor tech design took its toll and the RROD hit. It cost MS big time, but they managed to weather the storm and still managed a very respectable market share. To me, the first half of the 360 gen was easily Xbox at its absolute best. Just landing banger after banger games.
Dead Rising of course got me to upgrade to a HD TV so I could read the text.
Halo3 and its superb co-op campaign.
The best version of Bayonetta, which just blew me away.
Street Fighter 4. Project Gotham Racing 4.
The plastic instrument fad with Guitar Hero and Rockband.
By the time the 360 gen ended, the 360 hosted 6 of my GOTYs (one exclusive, two timed exclusives), and two games still in my personal top ten GOAT (Bayonetta and Dead Rising)

Then the rot set in. Clueless suits that have no idea what they're doing, no understanding of this industry got in charge. Decided to try and copy Nintendo to get in on that sweet sweet blue ocean money. Created that stupid Kinect shit.

The poor decisions just kept coming. The release of what is in my opinion the most disappointing and worst major console ever released, the Xbox One in 2013. TVTVTV. Blowing absolute shitloads of development budget on an exclusive NFL deal. Don Mattrick had absolutely no idea.
It came out ok with Dead Rising 3, Forza 5, and Sunset Overdrive shortly after, but it all went quickly to shit.
By the end of the XB1 gen, it hosted 2 of my GOTYs (both of them multi-platform).

So many good times. So many good memories. Over 62,000 gamerscore. It's a shame what the brand has become to me.

[Twiztid Elf]

Some of my favourite games I played on these consoles.

OG Xbox
Project Gotham Racing 1 - GOTY
Project Gotham Racing 2 - GOTY and Top Ten GOAT
GTA San Andreas - GOTY
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Links 2004 - Still the best golf game ever made
Ninja Gaiden
Jet Set Radio Future
Halo

Xbox 360
Street Fighter 4 - GOTY
Dead Rising - GOTY and Top Ten GOAT
Bayonetta - Top Ten GOAT
Project Gotham Racing 4 - GOTY
Xcom Enemy Unknown - GOTY
Skyrim - GOTY
Ninja Gaiden 2 - GOTY
Halo Anniversary
Halo 3
Lost Odyssey
Dead Rising 2
Blur
Vanquish
Child of Eden
Forza Horizon 1 and 2
Project Gotham Racing 3
Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise
Guitar Hero/Rockband/DJ Hero
Sonic Generations
Mass Effect 1
Azuras Wrath
Binary Domain
Rez HD
Deathsmiles
Street Fighter 2 HD Remix
Forza Motorsport 2, 3, 4
Gears of War
Fez


XB1
Overwatch - GOTY
Grand Theft Auto 5 - GOTY
Forza Horizon 3
Pinball FX
Cuphead
Forza Horizon 4
Dead Rising 3
Sunset Overdrive
Forza Motorsport 5

[Twiztid Elf]

Oh, and if Forza Horizon 5 IS Japan, I'll be getting that on PC.

[Ambrose Burnside]

Definitely agree that the first half of the 360 era was peak Xbox. Loved that era.

It's a shame what it's all become.

[unfnknblvbl]

Yeah, I feel like in their quest to gain mass market success, Microsoft has (helped) killed gaming for a lot of the people that made it what it is.

[Rorschach]

I still feel as though the Dreamcast is my top console experience. It brought me back to gaming after years in the wilderness after the PS One fizzled out and the Golden Age of the SNES and Megadrive were a long receding memory. I couldn't bring myself to go near a PS2 because all the Sega development teams were jumping ship to the original Xbox. To this day I think the OG Xbox had the best launch games of any console in Halo and JSRF. I barely had two years with the OG Xbox before leaving for Japan in 2003 but so good was the impression I bought another over there on sale along with a PS2. The Xbox by far got the most play time. The 360 was my go-to console again in Japan despite minimal support - prior to reliance on downloading games and the 'blades' era of the console, it had the best games and exclusives. The only reason I can see the PS3 had any success in Japan was strict Japanese brand loyalty and blu-ray, especially in the first year. I had a lot of great experiences on the 360 - RDR, the Halos and Gears games. I was fortunate I missed out on the Kinect rubbish. The Xbox One never appealled to me, not sure why, Sony just seemed to have the better initial exclusives and generally more focused on providing the best gaming experience. I think MS lost me when some suit said that if someone wanted to play offline just stick with the 360 - it was arrogant and misread the gaming public. The Series X being my first MS console since the 360 has been bittersweet. One that I am getting older but I missed one half of an entire generation and didn't feel like missed out on anything.

[Ambrose Burnside]

I've said this before, but what really annoys me is watching MS make the same mistakes that Sony have made in the past.

Proprietary (and therefore expensive) storage? Tick
Hard to get the best out of it because of half baked software? Tick
Shithouse launch? Tick

What fucking lessons are these fuckwits learning?

Game Pass is good though.

[Candy Arse]

Tremendous posts.

Loved the original Xbox, but for me the 360 has been this century's SNES - a white console with a games library that had every possible genre catered for along with a series of brilliant exclusives.

XBONE...not so much.

[Ambrose Burnside]

While I'm not a big fan of the genre, the 360 even had the best JRPG I've ever played. As an exclusive no less: Lost Odyssey.

It was released for free at some point (I assume when it was added to the BC library) and I claimed a digital copy then, but I still own the original 4-disc version to this day. I won it in a competition on the old Internode games.on.net website too. Would never have bought it otherwise.

Alan Wake was another cracking exclusive (that later came to PC). I regret selling the Collector's Edition I had (I have since bought it on PC though).

And remember when third party games were better on Xbox too?

[unfnknblvbl]

While I'm not a big fan of the genre, the 360 even had the best JRPG I've ever played. As an exclusive no less: Lost Odyssey.

It was released for free at some point (I assume when it was added to the BC library) and I claimed a digital copy then, but I still own the original 4-disc version to this day.

I feel the same about Blue Dragon. What a truly magnificent game and again, a massive "fuck you" from Microsoft by never following up on that. Did the bone even have any JRPGs (aside from Final Fantasy..)?

[Vince]

Great post. Brought back some very fond memories. Loved the OG Xbox. Copying music to the hard drive and playing Burnout 2 to ANY tune I like was brilliant. KOTOR. PGR. The console had it all for me.
The. The 360 (still to this day my fav console of all time). Started off brilliantly and continued right through to the fucking kinect. The amount of hours I sunk into so many 360 games was phenomenal. COD4. Gears 1, 2 and 3. PGR. Bejeweled 3!!! All the guitar hero and rock band games. I have seriously never had so much fun on a console. I luckily enough never had the RROD and I played a fuck tonne of 360. Either way, they botched it all up with the Kinect and their focus on that shit, then totally fucked up the launch of the Xbox one. Now that Phil has taken over it’s no longer the console that is the focus, it’s fucking services. Let’s get as many games to as much shit as we can. Why? Let PC gamers play PC games. Let Switch owners play Nintendo games. And let Xbox owners have their fucking exclusives and forget about this god damned game pass shit. I have enough subscriptions going on in my life. Let me own the games I want and play demos of games I want to try.
Anyway, I dearly loved Xbox. I honestly feel that Sony (funnily enough) has taken the reigns as far as exclusives and looking after console gamers is concerned (I’m aware they are shifting games to PC as well). I just wish Xbox could be what it once was during the original console and 1st 3 quarters of the 360’s life. I miss THAT Xbox.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I loved my OG XBox experience. Peeling the plastic off the console, seeing my amp indicate proper Dolby 5.1 surround then hearing it. Halo obviously but I remember playing Morrowind late one night. It was nightime and raining in the game. A clap of thunder and ligtning rumbled the subwoofer. Heaven. PGR2 remains my favourite ever driving game. PGR2's Xbox Live integration was awesome to behold and remains one of biggest single leaps in the gaming landscape I'd experienced. A shame Bizarre Creations was dissolved.

That gen I bought 'em all though and it was too much. I decided to limit myself to a single console the following gen. The PS3 I bought then remains the last console I owned. Have been PC-only since around 2009. These days PC gamers are XBox gamers. MS are a 'traditional gaming company' no more as they buy up devs with a view to putting as much onto their 'Netflix for videogames' service as they can. Not a huge fan of this direction as someone who wants to see the traditional gaming space still prosper but I can't deny the benefits it gives me as a consumer of games.

[Vince]

I loved my OG XBox experience. Peeling the plastic off the console, seeing my amp indicate proper Dolby 5.1 surround then hearing it. Halo obviously but I remember playing Morrowind late one night. It was nightime and raining in the game. A clap of thunder and ligtning rumbled the subwoofer. Heaven. PGR2 remains my favourite ever driving game. PGR2's Xbox Live integration was awesome to behold and remains one of biggest single leaps in the gaming landscape I'd experienced. A shame Bizarre Creations was dissolved.

That gen I bought 'em all though and it was too much. I decided to limit myself to a single console the following gen. The PS3 I bought then remains the last console I owned. Have been PC-only since around 2009. These days PC gamers are XBox gamers. MS are a 'traditional gaming company' no more as they buy up devs with a view to putting as much onto their 'Netflix for videogames' service as they can. Not a huge fan of this direction as someone who wants to see the traditional gaming space still prosper but I can't deny the benefits it gives me as a consumer of games.

I'm the same Pep in regards Microsoft being the Netflix of gaming. I'm a traditionalist and Microsoft going in that direction fills me with dread for the future of our much loved hobby.

[K.T.Shoe[BMs]]

I love my Xbox... including 3 different Xbox360's.

My most memorable moment is booting up Halo for the very first time, and hearing the games' awesome music.

I was very disappointed with the original Duke controller - sorry, that thing is just pure garbage.

I have to admit the Xbox One is a bit bland, starting off with the stupid name. Although, the free games with Xbox Live Gold, and later the Ultimate Game Pass make it worth it.

Right now I am waiting for a special deal on the Series X before taking the plunge.

[lestat]

Problem for the xbox brand has been relying too much on 3rd parties for their exclusives.

Once all those 3rd parties moved on or died, MS had nothing left. This is why they've been building up their first party, it will be interesting to see if it pays off for them.

[Ambrose Burnside]

Their main competitive advantage was being the most powerful (and Xbox Live). Once developers got to grips with the PS3, they lost that advantage and never got it back.

The lack of exclusives then hit twice as hard because Xbox was no longer home to the best versions of everyone's third party favourites.

Now they're betting all or nothing on Game Pass.

[flipswitch]

XBL/XBLA, better controller and party chat which from memory PS3 didn’t have. People did prefer playing multi platforms on Xbox.

[Ambrose Burnside]

They did. It's one of the main reasons I went Xbox 360 over PS3. It was also cheaper and if not more powerful than at the very least easier to get the best out of.

Sony learned all those lessons whereas Microsoft don't seem to have a clue what made the 360 a success. They said all the right things in the lead up to the Series X launch, then I dunno, forgot something really easy to forget like write drivers or something. But at least it uses expensive proprietary storage cos that's always a good idea. Shit.

[Ambrose Burnside]

I'm always harsh on the Xbox but I just get so frustrated at Microsoft's dumbarse decisions, especially considering they made so many good ones with the 360 (and the original with HDD as standard, Xbox Live etc), so somewhere in their corporate memory they should know what works and yet ... Yeah.

[Froggy]

I actually think they have learnt there lesson but it takes a long time for the decisions and the direction they have made to to turn it all around to get into place and mature. You can't fix the first party problem overnight but they clearly set about fixing it with a plan that is in motion. I think with the series x and quick resume etc they are back trying to improve gaming for gaming, it resonates with me that if I only have 45mins spare if I know that starting the game will be 5 - 10s and I can start off where I left it and I'll get to spend most of that 45mins actually playing I'm way more likely to then look at my xbox and think well im going to lose 2mins just loading it, then 2 more just loading my save nah I won't bother. They've been judged way too harshly on the xbone era compared to sony who made the same mistakes, I think the one x was the beginning of the turnaround as they aggressively tried to deliver a decent hardware set and set upon the one platform full backwards compatibility road. I only realised last night that I currently have installed a game from each xbox era and they've been being played, I hadn't even noticed because it's all so smooth.

[unfnknblvbl]

The only reason I'm not hard on the PS4 is because I don't own any PlayStation console. I'm sure I'd be ripping it to shreds too if I had.

Having said that, it absolutely boggles my mind that we've gone a whole generation of Xbox without seeing some of the basic quality of life improvements that the 360 had by the end of its life.

I don't think MS have learned their lesson. No way, not when they still think spending millions of dollars bifurcating their market is a good idea.

[klee123]

To be honest my only memories of Xbox were really when they acted as the defacto Sega replacement after the Dreamcast died. A lot of the Sega exclusives the original Xbox had were pretty good!

I did enjoy the first half of the 360's life with the a lot of the exclusives. Then it all went downhill for me they haven't recovered since in terms of games which appealed to me.

[Twiztid Elf]

OG Xbox clock capacitor.
I've been meaning to do this for a long, long time. I finally got around to it tonight.

For anyone here still hanging onto their OG Xbox, it is something you need to do. Your OG Xbox is apparently a ticking timebomb with this capacitor in there.
Apparently not a case of if but when it explodes and pours corrosive acid all over your OGXB motherboard and bricks it.

Things you need:
- Compaq screwdriver. At least that's what I call them. Apparently called "torque" screwdriver. Not sure on the technical terms, but you need the big one and the little one.
- Some alcohol for cleaning, not drinking... And cotton buds for cleanup.
- Compressed air if you want to blast the dust out while it's open.

So I plugged mine in and turned it on and it booted up fine. Woot! - It made a hell of a worrying racket for the first couple of minutes though.

First step is to figure out if you're 1.6 or not. 1.6 it is not a problem, and I think you will brick your OGXB by doing this.
All other types, you need to pull the capacitor out.
I used this link to help determine my type.
https://www.informit.com/articles/artic ... 0&seqNum=2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Mine is 1.0 made in Hungary in January 2002.

There are many guides to opening up OG Xbox.
- Flip it over, pull the rubber feet off and peel back two of the stickers a little.
- unscrew the 6 screws, flip it back over.
- pull the top case off.
- Unplug the IDE cable from the hard drive, unscrew the one centre screw and flip the HDD out.
- Unplug the IDE cable from the DVD drive, unscrew the sunken, lower two screws and flip the DVD drive out.
DON'T GO NEAR THE POWER SUPPLY.
MS didn't case or shield the power supply, so yeah, don't go touching anything there even if it's unplugged.
- Just wriggle out the offending capacitor. Took me 50 pushes side to side for it to snap off.
- Reverse the process to put it all back together and hopefully boot up.
- Play PGR2.

I was pretty lucky it seems. No acid bleed for me.

Not sure if you guys have heard of it, but there is this racing game called Project Gotham Racing 2. It's pretty fucking good.
I played it for a while tonight.
Visually, its like I haven't got my glasses on, but when I check they are on, but man, that gameplay....
Still the best racing game ever made. Easily.

[unfnknblvbl]

it's called a Torx driver, fyi.

but yeah, anyone holding onto any electronics more than 15 years old really needs to get those caps looked at. It's terrible how many old electronics are going to ruin thanks to bad caps and leaking batteries. If you care about your collection, get them all open and have a look!

[Twiztid Elf]

I've been playing PGR1, PGR2, Links2004 and JSRF today.
It's bloody amazing how well these games still hold up. Amazing that these were made in the early 00's.
OG Xbox really was a beast.