Goodnight Sweet Prince.

The Microsoft Xbox 360 was arguably the most successful of the seventh generation console systems. While not selling as many units as the Nintendo Wii or having the superior hardware of the Sony Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and the Xbox Live service helped drive a shift in online gaming utilizing consoles.

Patrick’s comments are in italics.

Hardware

The console was not without fault though, as you can see above their were many iterations and hardware revisions. Even now a new version of the console is being released that shares an appearance closer to that of the Xbox One than previous incarnations. The dreaded Red Ring of Death was the death knell of many a Microsoft console.

 

Myself, I have purchased 3 Xbox 360 consoles. One at launch, another with an HDMI output once my first Xbox red ringed (thanks Superman Returns) and finally I traded that in for an Xbox 360 Slim. Gamestop had a killer deal on trade in and knowing the potential for hardware failure I took a gamble and couldn’t have been happier. It took Microsoft a while but they manged to hit the mark with that model, there has been some overheating with that console as well. The main failings were the inability to match Sony on the Blu Ray front (we all looked really stupid with our external HD-DVD drives) and trying to get in on motion gaming with little innovation.

If absolutely nothing else the Xbox 360 proved that having the most advanced and highest end hardware is not the most important thing when it comes to having a successful console. With a robust online community and what is one of the best (at least in my opinion) controllers ever designed, the Xbox 360 entered the market early with a full year to itself in the next gen space. Sony said the next generation started when they said it did and that was true so long as what they said was a year earlier when the 360 debuted.

This lead time is often underestimated in its importance in the console war as the Wii outsold the 360 and the PS3 eventually got its shit together to be a contender but the damage to the PS3 that this year did was deeper and more insidious than that in that in effectively leveled the hardware playing field. With a larger installed base, the 360 was the best bet for developers who needed the most bang for their buck so games were typically made for the 360 and ported over to the PS3, the PS3 being difficult to program for didn’t help much. 

So the net effect gave us games that were built for the 360 and the 360 defined the standard for cross-platform games. This was a fairly huge deal for this generation that a system plagued by a fairly sever hardware fault like the Red Rings still dominated the field and led to people buying multiple 360s instead of jumping ship to Sony (plenty did anyway).  All you really have to do is play a Sony exclusive title to see how big of a deal of this is because they are crazy good looking. So what Microsoft did this generation was masterful  and illustrated that it isn’t the power but what you do with it…and that isn’t just something that people without much power say. 

Games

Alan Wake, Crackdown,  Halo Series, Gears of War Series and Left 4 Dead Series to name a few are, console wise, exclusive titles that stand out for their contributions to making the Xbox 360 unique. Let’s address the elephant in the room first. Halo, despite any kind of bias, major a huge impact for FPS online community play. They did loose a little steam after Halo 2 as Halo 3 was popular but Call of Duty and Battlefield were the preferable go to franchises for shooters. Gears of War, a 3rd person shooter, was an interesting franchise, building on the scifi model that was popular at the time we were shipped off to a planet perhaps not so different from our own. Besides the population all looking like linebackers and a sub-terrain species bent on conqueroring the surface to save themselves from a parasitic race that wanted to kill all life. Still the storyline and ability for co-op campaign really made these one of the best reasons to own an Xbox 360. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent playing Horde Mode on Gears of War 2, I could but I don’t want to. Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 came out at just the right time, riding the crazy of the zombie apocalypse wave and delivering a 4 person co-op and versus experience that has not been approached until the release of Payday 2. Crackdown asked the question, what if you were a super-powered cop in a GTA style game? They not only delivered on that but made an enjoyable co-op component that had you chasing your frenemies with rocket launchers and cars in hand through Pacific City. Protect and serve? Nope, more like crime and punishment. Alan Wake is one of the most underrated titles released on the Xbox 360, it plays like a Stephen King novel and while you do have a gun your main weapon is a flashlight. That is just an insane game play mechanic that worked incredibly well, this is one of the few games I go back to and restart on higher difficulties.

Online Service

Xbox Live launched in 2002 and vastly improved in 2005 for the Xbox 360, it is tough to argue that either Nintendo or Sony had a good answer to this online gaming juggernaut. Yes, it was a $50 a year fee but you had access to so much! Demos, web series, eventually Netflix, Amazon On Demand and HBO Go. Suddenly your gaming console started to level up it’s entertainment XP and offset that access for Xbox Live Gold.

Conclusion

Despite it’s hardware short comings  the Xbox 360, while a seventh generation console, has been the workhorse for almost a decade to improve and change console gaming. Some gamers will always see a console as secondary to a PC and I can appreciate that argument, the Xbox 360 was one of my first console purchases since the heyday of N64 and Goldeneye. Without a doubt Xbox 360 has done a great service to the gaming industry and has been a great space heater to have around on the shelf. Your tour is over Xbox 360, you’ve done us gamers proud.

The longevity of a system like this that is underpowered compared to its closest competition and that had such a rocky start in terms of reliability is a testament to good strategy, a fantastic online structure (and security) and a very good stable of exclusive titles. The Xbox 360 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Microsoft was a major player in this game. Certainly it was not without fault but it hung in there and became one of my favorite systems I’ve owned.