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On November 22 2005, Microsoft unleashed the Xbox 360 onto the world. As of only a few days ago, the machine is now 20 years old.
So what is the legacy of the machine? While the original Xbox was a fairly niche success that failed to rival the PlayStation 2 at 24 million units sold, the Xbox 360 at 84 million units sold, is currently the tenth best-selling game console of all time and the most successful American console ever made.
In my mind, the Xbox 360 is what put the Xbox truly on the map as a competitor for Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft proved that it could compete with the big boys in the console market and the original wasn't just a one-trick pony.
The Xbox 360 upstarted a lot of modern aspects of gaming that we still see today. It amped up the graphics of its predecessors tenfold and integrated games into a whole new era of gaming. While it wasn't the first console to have online capabilities, the 360 was the first console that truly integrated the online experience into gaming as a whole with its updated Xbox Live service, and it quickly became in integral part of the hobby for millions.
It also was the first console to integrate what has become one of the most quintessential aspects of gaming for many of us: Achievements! And how much it sucks when games have online achievements that you can't get because the server goes dead or because you don't care about playing online for that game. I am definitely an achievement whore, and I have the 360 to thank for that. Sony's competing console of the same generation, the PlayStation 3, was quick to follow suit and unleashed the Trophy system. Now, nearly every gaming platform has an achievement system. Still waiting on Nintendo, that has amazingly still not implemented its own achievement system as of the Switch 2.
I got my Xbox 360 when I was 10 years old when I was at my grandparents' house in Arkansas, a couple of months after I had left the United Kingdom to return to my homeland of the States. For the entirety of the time that the 360 was our primary console, we didn't actually have any way to play online, so unlike most of us, the 360 for me purely was just another console for playing games. This meant that I was basically using the machine as a glorified PS2 with better graphics and different games. That sure as hell didn't stop me from loving the games I played on it though.
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When me, my brothers, and my mother went to get our Xbox 360, we were each allowed to buy one game for it. Among those first three for the system were Forza Motorsport 3 (my choice) and Halo Reach (my older brother's choice). Looking at the intro race in Forza Motorsport 3 for the first time with the Audi R8 around the Camino Viejo circuit felt like I was looking at real life. Having the played the original Forza Motorsport only a couple of years ago at that point, the graphical jump from the first game to the third game felt astronomical. Forza was what made the Xbox for me, so I decided that I had to get the second game too. I remember when Forza Motorsport 4 was announced at E3 in 2011 and I was instantly all aboard the hype train. The trailer featured the song Power by Kanye West, and incidentally, I was also playing Saints Row: The Third at the time, and that song is prominently featured in that game too. Call that fate if you will. Forza Motorsport 4 blew me away with its extremely huge car list of cars that no one had ever heard of before, and the Autovista mode felt like heaven on earth for the little kid in me.
The Xbox 360 is also what definitely expanded my horizons into what games I like as a gamer, which makes sense as I was transitioning from childhood to adolescence. Halo Reach sunk a lot of time for me as a kid. It was one of my earliest first-person shooter games, and I also remember spending a hell of a long time making custom race tracks and platforming challenges in the game's Forge mode. The Forge World map was a vast paradise for me to make essentially whatever I wanted, which started as Mongoose race tracks and then gradually shifted over to Banshee race tracks. This was also the first time I had ever played an RPG, as we had Oblivion on the 360 as well. When I first played Skyrim on the 360, I was in absolute awe at how it looked compared to Oblivion.
Image source: IGDB
The Xbox 360 represents both the start of an era and the end of one. I mentioned online play and the achievement system before, but this generation of consoles was the first one for DLC to really take a foothold into the gaming world as we know it. Downloading extra content into games you owned before was by no means a "new" or "innovative" idea at this point, but the 360 was the first console that made the entire process so seamless. No longer did you need to go outside and physically buy an expansion pack for your game. Now you could buy every piece of additional content right from your home. In my mind, it's at this point where DLC officially put its foot down in our lives as gamers as we know it.
Not only was DLC made so seamless with the 360, but so were patches. Once again, this wasn't a new idea, but the 360 made the entire process extremely simple and foolproof. Gone were the days of the games needing to be physically re-released, leading to pre and post-patched versions of video games available to buy with research required beforehand to know which one you were buying. Now a simple update could fix the game for everyone and it was revolutionary. Unfortunately, this has started the trend of games being released when they're nowhere near close to being releasable and patching everything up later, but when game developers use the patching capabilities responsibly, it's game-changing (both literally and figuratively). The seventh console generation was the last time when almost everything launched in a good state.
The Xbox 360 (and also the PlayStation 3 for that matter) left an everlasting mark of us as we know it and it's easy to see the ways it is still influential today. The machine was officially discontinued in 2016, but it still maintained a strong playerbase. It wasn't until July 2024 that all online functionality for the console was officially discontinued, and people still sing high praise of the machine now as we speak.
What are your memories with the console and how it has affected you? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
God, 20 years of Xbox. It's wild to think that it has been that long.
I never owned an original Xbox, nor did I own a 360 though almost everyone i knew did - I was a Nintendo kid.
My first ever memory with Xbox was when I went to a tournament to play Halo without ever playing the game or the console. It was taking place at EB Games and then my store didn't have enough registrations so we were transferred to another one a couple of towns over at their large mall. I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing and it reinforced that I really did not like playing shooters with a mouse.
That did end up making me interested in the game though, and I did buy it at a later date when I realized it was out on PC as well.
My first Xbox console was the Xbox One. I bought it mainly as a Forza machine though I also played GTA V, Halo 5: Guardians, and various random titles. It was such a funny looking console, I wasn't the biggest fan of the design of it, the 360 was such a beautiful and iconic beast. Then I upgraded to a Project Scorpio edition Xbox One X on launch day because I wanted more power out of it and that sweet 4K resolution. I still love how it said "Project Scorpio" on the console and controller in that green text, it was wild that they didn't do the same thing for the Xbox Series X (Code named Project Scarlet) because I had hoped to add another unique piece to my collection of consoles.
Of course, the Series X was purchased on launch day as well because we wanted even more power, we wanted faster loading, and the beauty of raytracing and true 4k potential. Admittedly, I haven't played my Series X as much as I had hoped, though Forza runs so beautifully on it and with Game Pass, I've definitely played a wider variety of games on it than the Xbox One family.
PC will always have my heart though and it's nice to see that Microsoft has been focusing their efforts more on PC and cross-platform instead of a closed ecosystem: Xbox Play Anywhere. It's interesting to see where the Xbox brand will go in the future and I do wonder if the new Steam Machine can get enough support, could we see Xbox appear more on it in some way? Sideloaded app store? I would love to see Microsoft fully embrace Xbox on Linux.