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[Outrunner]

Games, Games, Games

 

[Rudius]

What made it really desirable were the true exclusives. They are important.

 

[skit_data]

Epic convincing MS to put 512MB of RAM instead of 256 MB was probably one of the major reasons.

I wonder how things would’ve turned out if they went with 256 MB instead

 

[Thirty7ven]

360 was fire up until halfway through the generation or maybe two thirds in. The height of its powers also mirror what the industry felt at the time, brown and grey shooter galore. It’s the dudebro generation for a reason, and 360 was the poster child.

A lot of people will have incredible memories because they caught the online shooter craze, others like me will remember how tired it became, how a promising series ended with Mass Effect 3 being more interested in being a shooter than a rpg, how Gears of War 3 was already too long in the tooth, and the industry felt stuck in dudebro. Energy drinks for everybody.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

360 early days was the best Microsoft has ever been. Better price, better graphics, better games, better online…

It was hype as fuck.

Bit of a shame Microsoft never got that mojo again… Phil gets a lot of hype but he’s merely competent, it’s just that after the Don Mattrick blunders competency looks good, but he’s nowhere Moore level. Peter was not only good at running Xbox but he was a genius marketer the man knew, period, how to sell things.

Xbox had a certain special energy back then, that they never got back. I mean can you imagine Phil sending a boat to crash the ps5 launch like they did back then?

 

[tusharngf]

2005-2009 was hype. Then late 2009 it limped along to a Mattrick end.

the entry of kinect kinda changed the game for Microsoft. They never recovered after 2010 till this day.

 

[Genx3]

Xbox 360 is the GOAT.

Many of the features we now expect in consoles were given to us first by the 360.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Xbox live. Good price console. Good games. Good controller. First out the market re Nextgen at the time.

 

[Rambotito]

For me it was the timing. I got mine in January of 2006 and the 360 felt very new and fresh and had a ton of features that we take for granted today. Messaging, marketplace, wireless controllers, unified shaders, friends lists, dashboard color changes, etc. It felt like a very complete little console (missing wifi and HDMI, I know).

Gears of War came out in late 2006 and it blew me away - especially the lighting. Microsoft continued to update the console ; releasing the Elite and adding features every year. There were new IPs and the Sony's exclusive software barrier was breaking down. We got good JRPGs like Lost Odyssey, which was a pipe dream during the OG Xbox days. Sony was still stumbling out of the gate but eventually started to get some noteworthy games and price reductions, but it still felt like Xbox was King Console - at least in the US. Third party games looked and ran much better on the 360. Everything was going great until...

Kinect.

The focus on Kinect and trying to steal some of the Wii crowd left a bitter taste in my mouth. That and Avatars, which were a Mii ripoff. And no, I never wanted to know what the bottom of an Avatar's shoe looked like.

 

[Umbasaborne]

The last console (and gen) that had games that blew my mind.
These years when games actually started to look and feel larger than life were special.

I mean, games are amazing today, but the PS360 era basically forecasted them for us.

Yeah there was something so special about that whole generation. Games felt larger than life. Ill never forget seeing gears of war for the first time. That was THE game that cemented my desire for a 360, which i ended up getting that same holiday 2006! Its easy to over look it now, But games like oblivion, gears of war and the first uncharted looked fucking amazing at the time. Like i had never seen anything that looked as great as they did before that. But even before 2006, playing those 360 demo kiosks at target and seeing call of duty 2 and project gotham racing 3 really blew me the fuck away.

ill never forget staying up late into the morning on a school day when i was in 7th grade to watch the g4 xbox 360 launch event in time square. I also associate the ps360 era with giant bomb because that was when i really got into them. They got me into so many games i would have probably passed over. They helped to expand my pallet immensely.

i did eventually buy a ps3 in late 2009, just for uncharted 2, but man so many amazing games came out for that console as well. Infamous 1 and 2, killzone 2 and 3, the motorstorm games (the first game blew my mind the way gears did when i saw it for the first time); the ratchet and clank future games, 3d dot game hero, heavy rain...too many good games to count. Across every platform. I remember getting a wii pretty much just for Mario galaxy and wii sports.

the hand held market was super strong to. During the duration of the ps360 years we had the ds, 3ds, psp, and vita! Plus high quality mobile games like infinity blade!

anyway sorry for my long tirade, i just have a lot of love for that generation, for the 360, ps3, and wii! It was a hell of a ride. Lol i still have a sealed copy of peter jacksons king kong for the xbox 360, one of the first launch games.

ps: best year of that entire generation was 2007. We had halo 3, mario galaxy, mass effect, bioshock, uncharted, call of duty 4, assassins creed, the orange box, the simpsons game. Too many good games to count.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

The exclusives were great

 

[Rickyiez]

It revolutionized the console multiplayer experience for me . Be it co-op Gears with buddies or fragging kills in Halo 3 and COD : MW multiplayer or ranked games in SF4 , so many many hours was sunk into these .

 

[Artistic]

Definitely Microsoft's best Xbox to date. Wonder if they'll ever be able to recreate that magic, especially with the Japanese support.