ANearly 20 years ago (December 1, 2005, to be exact), I was at my first video game console launch party around London’s Leicester Square. The Xbox 360 came out on November 22, 2005 in the US and on December 2 in the UK, about three months after I got my first job as a junior staff writer at GamesTM magazine. My memories of the night are blurry because a) it was a worryingly long time ago and b) there was a free bar, but I remember DJ Yoda playing on a sadly deserted dancefloor, and everything was very green. However, my memories of the console and the games played on it are still as clear as Xbox crystal. It’s up there with the greatest consoles of all time.
In 2001, the first Xbox introduced itself into the Japanese console-dominated scene, overturning the established order (it had outsold Nintendo’s GameCube by a few million) and pulling console gaming into the online era with Xbox Live, an online multiplayer service that preceded the PlayStation 2. Nonetheless, the PS2 sold over 150m compared to the original Xbox’s 25m. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, would sell over 80 million with the PlayStation 3 for most of its eight-year life cycle (and well ahead in the US). It transformed Xbox from a newcomer to the market leader.
In a very un-Microsoft way, the Xbox 360 was great. Its design was interesting, with an inward double curve that its designers described as “inhale”, with a swappable front faceplate. It had a memorable Y2K startup animation and clean, futuristic menus that brought up messages, friends lists, and music. I remember Microsoft’s marketing at the time was pretty lame – check out this developer video, featuring former Microsoft Entertainment boss Jay Allard and his infamous earring, in which a guy juggles while saying the words “three symmetric cores”. But, despite this, the machine they created seemed modern and exciting. The controller, too, with its pops of color, was such a tremendous improvement over the uncomfortably huge original Xbox controller that it has become a design standard. I know people who will still only use a wired Xbox 360 pad to play PC games.
As the first properly, seamlessly connected console, it brought together a lot of things to create a sense of gamer identity: playing different games online under a unified gamertag; The message and social features, as well as the inspired idea of achievements, created a personal gaming history through small challenges you completed in every game you played. (Sony would soon mimic this with trophies.) Adding a number to it, GamersScore, was devilish genius, encouraging players to compete for ultimately meaningless clout, and creating a powerful incentive for people to stick with the console rather than buy games elsewhere. The Xbox 360 was the first console to understand that people hang out where their friends are. If you had a choice between buying a game on PS3 or 360, you would choose the 360 because that’s where everyone else was playing.
By the end of 2006, when a complacent Sony released an overpriced and strange-looking follow-up to the PlayStation 2, the Xbox 360 had already had a year to convert people to its vision of high-definition gaming. People had already built a collection of games and an online identity that was tied to Xbox. Large third-party game publishers, who found it awkward to develop the PS3’s proprietary technology, began to prefer the Xbox for multi-platform games. The 360 never broke Japan, but it became the default console in the rest of the world, an extraordinary thing for Microsoft, given how thoroughly Sony had dominated the previous two generations with the PlayStation.
Xbox Live Arcade also helped usher in the modern era of indie games. Between the late ’90s and early ’00s, publishers and brick-and-mortar retailers largely controlled which games reached players’ hands and which did not, especially on consoles. In 2008, Xbox Live Arcade began letting people download small, inexpensive games directly to their console – no store or publisher required. It did for console gaming what Steam later did for PC, getting players comfortable with the idea of digital distribution. Games released through the arcade include Geometry Wars, Braid, Limbo, Bastion and, importantly, the best digital version of Uno ever. I remember spending many hours playing Oblivion, Mass Effect, and BioShock as a teenager, but I also eagerly anticipated each new batch of Xbox Live Arcade games.
Looking back, the architects of the Xbox 360 really understood how and why people played games, and what they wanted from a next-generation console at the time. He understood how the Internet could change not only multiplayer gaming, but also the social experience around games and the way people find and buy them. This knowledge was clearly lost in just a few years, because when Microsoft announced the Xbox One in 2013, it was utter nonsense. By then, Microsoft clearly thought people wanted to play games while watching sports picture-in-picture, with an inevitable connected camera tracking your every move.
Microsoft never again came close to market leadership in video games. A resurgent Sony took all the best lessons from the Xbox 360 and packed them into the PlayStation 4, and then in 2018 the Nintendo Switch came along and blew everything else out of the water. With Xbox now in third place in the waning console wars, it seems to see its future as a quasi-monopoly video game subscription service rather than a hardware manufacturer. Series that defined the 360 era like Halo and Gears of War are now playable on PC and PlayStation. Others, like Fable, have languished for more than a decade.
The 360 era was an exciting time in games, an era of great change and competition brought about by online gaming. The console market was very small at the time, but predictions were also low. There was still room for those “interesting, 7/10” B-games that sometimes proved to be even more memorable than blockbusters when free-to-play games weren’t a thing yet – games just weren’t yet consolidated into the five established mega-franchises that now dominate everything. And, by bringing indie games to console players, it really changed the trajectory of my gaming tastes.
what to play
I was curious to write about Xbox Live Arcade Geometry Wars: Retro EvolvedBrilliantly compulsive Xbox Live Arcade top-down shooter that looks like fireworks and feels like a sensory bath for your brain. So I downloaded it on Steam and immediately became addicted to it once again. Created by Project Gotham Racing Game’s Bizarre Creations, the game was tied with Uno as the most downloaded digital game of the 360s, and it still holds up beautifully. I’d forgotten how beautifully the grid backgrounds ripple when things explode, a bit of high-definition-era flair for a very arcade-era game.
Available on: Steam, Xbox (if you’re happy playing the sequel instead)
Estimated playing time: From 10 minutes, okay, 20 years
what to read
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I’ve been thinking a lot about difficult games lately, and what it is that keeps me coming back to them, which has led to a lot of reading about challenge from a game designer’s perspective. And then this very brief article by Raf Koster, veteran Ultima Online designer, and much more, came across my feed. it is called The game design is really simpleAnd it is a must read.
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If you’re more of a fan of the OG Xbox, you’ll be happy to know crocs recently launched an Xbox Clogg, inspired by the black and green beast of the original Xbox’s controller. it is fantastically Ugly.
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Poncal, the creators of BAFTA Game of the Year winner Vampire Survivors, has announced a new game, vampire crawlerWith a great trailer. It’s a mix of card game and old school first-person dungeon crawler.
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what to click
question block
Last week, reader Jude asked me what video game world I’d most like to live in (obviously Cyrodiil from The Elder Scrolls), and we sent the question back to you. We got a lot of delightful and/or insane reactions — here’s what you had to say.
“If you want to go somewhere to get a beer, its the world cyberpunk 2077 Getting to the top is finding it surprisingly difficult.” – spence bromage
“I know it’s silly but I was so excited by the ship system shock 2I wanted to be there!” -Charles Rouleau
“The Dragon Age The universe in a heartbeat. Give me Ferelden and Denerim and yes, Orlais too. Give me a Skyhold to live in and a battlefield to manage, and I’ll never leave. , kateland vernon
“Call me weird, but I’ll fallout 3 To stay. Seeing parts of humanity suffering in a wasteland, with a widespread battle between good and evil, had a massive impact on me. , toby darnall
“I have a weird one: Animal WellThe freedom to explore this self-contained little map full of hidden corners means I know really well where I am on the map, Even though I have ‘completed’ the game’s activities, I have found some strange comfort in the last two weeks since finishing the game, just wandering around for the joy of it,’ , Ben Gibb-Reed
If you have a question for the Questions Block – or have something else to say about the newsletter – Email us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.
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