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10 ways the Xbox 360 changed gaming
Microsoft are finally ending production of their second console, but it leaves an enduring legacy.
Xbox 360: The console that changed gaming
© Microsoft
It’s the beginning of the end for the last generation of consoles. Though there are still more games on the way, Microsoft have announced that they’re finally ceasing production of the Xbox 360 after more than a decade.
“While we’ve had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced in a blog post. “Which is why we have made the decision to stop manufacturing new Xbox 360 consoles.”
While the Xbox 360 was not Microsoft’s first games console, or even the biggest seller of its generation (with 84 million lifetime sales, it still lags behind the 101 million Wiis Nintendo managed to sell), it’s hard not to understate just how important the console was to the gaming industry – and players themselves.
Despite the infamous 'Red Ring of Death' production issues, the 360 launched amazing new franchises like Gears of War and made Sony take action, finally forcing them to innovate in a big way with the PS4. It was noisy, yes, but it was also a game-changer. As we say goodbye, here are 10 reasons why.
1. It standardised wireless gamepads
Sure, there had been wireless controllers long before the Xbox 360 came out – the Atari 2600, believe it or not, was the very first console to have a wireless controller, no self-respecting Gamecube owner was without a Wavebird, and the PS2 had cordless pads too. But making someone buy a wireless pad is very different from providing them out of the box, and when Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 way back in 2005 with wireless pads, it released us all from our plastic-coated, tripwire shackles, and let us game from wherever we pleased, albeit within a few metres’ radius, and provided we had regular pocket money for AA batteries. Every major console since has launched with wireless gamepads bundled into the box.
2. It raised the bar for online play
Whether your first experience of online gaming was playing Unreal Tournament on a 56k connection, Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast or an early shooter on PS2 or Xbox, it’s hard to argue that the experience wasn’t lacking something until the Xbox 360 pulled everything together. There’s something to be said for good timing in this instance – the 360 came along when many of us were getting access to speedy broadband connections – but the subsequent update to Xbox Live set the gold standard for online gaming. Xbox Live provided voice chat, Xbox Live Marketplace and Xbox Live Arcade (we’ll get to that) as standard, while paid-up Gold members could gorge themselves on online gaming for as long as their sleep-deprived brains could manage. Glorious.
3. It created the concept of different console tiers
Right from the start, Microsoft tried to cater to different audiences at different price points with the Xbox 360, first with the budget Xbox 360 Arcade/Core and top-tier Pro/Elite models, and then in later years with the 250/500GB second-gen models and their 4GB alternative at the low-end. When the PS3 launched a year later, Sony also made sure to offer two models with different hard drive capacities, and Nintendo would later follow suit with the Wii U.
4. It premiered Netflix and video streaming on console
Before the Xbox 360 cruised into our living rooms, games consoles were exactly that – they were machines that played games, and the likes of Sega, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft had always waged war over who could make the best gaming machine. But the Xbox 360 wasn’t just a games console, it provided entertainment for all by letting you stream TV, video and music. Sure, PS3 let you watch Blu-ray, but Xbox 360 was the beginning of the connected generation, and supported apps for loads of streaming services, including Netflix, which didn’t come to PlayStation 3 until some years after.
5. Kinect changed the concept of a controller
Look, yes, we’ll concede that most Kinect games for the Xbox 360 were gimmicks, and the initially mandatory Kinect bundle may have cost Microsoft dearly with the launch of the Xbox One, but hear us out. Compared to Sony’s rival PlayStation Move wands, the motion-sensing camera of the Kinect add-on was revolutionary – why use a controller when you can just be one instead? We still love controlling our Xbox One using Kinect’s voice commands, and, perhaps more importantly, the research Microsoft poured into it has had a big impact on other gaming ventures, such as their upcoming Hololens headset – it’s no coincidence that one of Kinect’s pioneers, Kuno Tsunoda, is now heading up the Hololens software team at Microsoft.
6. Xbox Live Arcade changed how we buy games
Xbox Live Arcade has become such an accepted part of the Xbox Live experience that it’s woefully underappreciated these days. XBLA was originally launched on the first Xbox, but it wasn’t until it relaunched on 360 that it evolved into a thing of retro-beauty. Microsoft built XBLA into the 360’s dashboard and implemented the catchy Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays, releasing a new game on the service every – you guessed it – Wednesday. Soon enough, XBLA was home to a host of brilliant retro-titles – often with new multiplayer features and updated HD graphics – as well as amazing new indie titles (Braid, Super Meat Boy and Limbo all launched on XBLA) and, best of all, you could download a free trial of anything to see what you thought. In hindsight, Xbox Live Arcade might be one of the best things to happen to gaming in the last couple of decades.
7. Xbox Live Indie Games began a revolution
It’s hard to believe in 2016, when both Sony and Microsoft fight to get the most talented and interesting independent developers on stage at their E3 showcases, but back in the mid-2000s, consoles were the reserve of big-name publishers only. To put a game out on a disc, in shops, cost money and required connections small teams did not have. XLIG let just about anybody release a game on the console, and others try it out. It was like the game equivalent of brewing beer at home, endorsed by Microsoft, and built up a loyal audience over its lifetime. Though the service was not continued with the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft’s willingness to try out grassroots, even buggy games, lives on in the form of their Preview programme.
8. It pioneered cross game and party chat on console
Not only did Xbox 360 do in-game and party chat better than its predecessors and competition back in the day, we’d argue that it still does it better than Xbox One and PS4 too. The current generation of consoles seem so wrapped up in doing so many things, it can take for ever to get into a party with a friend or a team-mate. On Xbox 360 it was so simple – just open the dashboard, go into the friends tab, and join a party. Aside from occasional connection hiccups, the whole thing was seamless, and made the online experience that much fuller by letting you get straight into the serious bit of your gaming session. Before Xbox 360, online voice chat was the domain of of PC gamers with endless patience – now it’s just normal.
9. It was the first console to do HD
When the Xbox 360 first arrived at the end of 2005, some of us didn’t yet have TVs that supported full HD. Still, that didn’t stop Microsoft from packing the console off with HD compatibility, all the way up to full 1080p resolution. Sure, you needed a VGA cable to live that Full-HD life – the bundled component cable only supported 1080i – but it was a small price to pay to make your games look legitimately next-gen. It wasn’t until March 2007 – nearly 18 months later – that the PS3 arrived in Europe complete with HDMI-out of the box, and a good thing that it did too, because Xbox 360 had already kicked off the HD era.
10. Xbox Achievements. Enough said.
We all laughed about achievements when Microsoft first hyped them up. Virtual awards for playing games? Ridiculous! But it wasn’t long before we were all on-board the great achievement train, staying up all night to complete games we had no interest in for those precious 50 gamer points that would put us ahead of our mates. It sounds pretty silly when you put it like that, but achievements brought new life to games that would otherwise be consigned to the shelf – pointing us in the direction of new challenges and rewarding us with an ever-increasing gamerscore to reflect our gaming prowess. In fact, it was so good that Sony nicked the idea, implementing their ‘trophy’ system shortly afterwards – though we’d argue achievements still haven’t been bettered. Nobody wants bronze, right?
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