Xbox 20th Anniversary

[burningdoom]

Xbox turns 20. The youngest of the big console gaming companies is now 20. Did anyone watch the special they did yesterday for it? About a half hour to 40 minutes long, not too long.

It was mostly memories and nostalgia for Xbox gamers. But there were a handful of interesting announcements, as well:

-A 6-part documentary series on the history and behind-the-scenes of Xbox. I'm definitely interested in this, as I'm a sucker for gaming documentaries.

-A special 20th Anniversary Edition Controller - Meh, modern controllers are expensive, I'm fine with my stock Xbox Series X controller.

-Halo: Infinite Multiplayer Beta is now live and accessible for everyone. Plus everything earned will transfer over when the official version launches.

-Over 70 new backwards compatible titles that will be playable on Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X with enhanced graphics and FPS. This has me excited as XBox Series X's robust backwards compatibility was a big reason for me getting a Series X:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/xbox-has-announced-over-70-new-backward-compatible-games/

Thoughts? Reactions? I know it wasn't a lot of news, but I like what little we did get.

[jason]

I know it wasn't a lot of news, but I like what little we did get.

I'm also glad we got what we got! It has also been refreshing to see the focus on backward compatibility! I really can't believe it's been 20 years already...

[weirdfeline]

I liked the original Xbox stage they had. The whole show was pretty good. Beautiful Katamari and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand being backwards compatible now is awesome.

[koemo1]

I loved playing Halo 2 and Battlefield 2 on this thing. Great Sinterklaas gift

[burningdoom]

Forgot to mention the live-action Halo series coming out, too. Definitely interested in that, as well.

[telekill]

Xbox is actually the only brand I've written off.

My bud bought an Xbox when it first released. He had it preordered. He raced home, set it up, put the Halo disc in.... "Disc Read Error" on the first load. I laughed. He didn't. Next time it booted properly and it turns out, Halo was amazing. I have great memories of Halo LAN parties with my brother. In fact, I had such an incredible time at the LAN parties, that when Halo 2 released, I bought an Xbox and a collector's edition of Halo 2.

That's when things went south. I bought it to play with my brother online. He was almost never online. I beat the campaign which was good... and then went online. The online community was so incredibly toxic that after a single month... I sold the Xbox after having it for only a single month. Luckily, it was the holiday season and I made back my money via eBay. I never looked back.

[wolff242]

Xbox is actually the only brand I've written off.

My bud bought an Xbox when it first released. He had it preordered. He raced home, set it up, put the Halo disc in.... "Disc Read Error" on the first load. I laughed. He didn't. Next time it booted properly and it turns out, Halo was amazing. I have great memories of Halo LAN parties with my brother. In fact, I had such an incredible time at the LAN parties, that when Halo 2 released, I bought an Xbox and a collector's edition of Halo 2.

That's when things went south. I bought it to play with my brother online. He was almost never online. I beat the campaign which was good... and then went online. The online community was so incredibly toxic that after a single month... I sold the Xbox after having it for only a single month. Luckily, it was the holiday season and I made back my money via eBay. I never looked back.

I mean, power to you...but to write off an entire platform because of one games toxic community seems a bit overboard. On Playstation 3, the SoCom community was the worst I've ever seen. I just quit playing it online.

[vivigamer]

Stoked about the 76 backwards compatible titles announced - some real gems added too!
NieR - Yes there was a remaster but I always liked being able to play as the older main character from this version.
TimeSplitters 2 & 3
Max Payne 1-3 - Can't get Max Payne 2's disc to work... hope they fix this.
Gunvalkayrie - I actually bought this digitally, I can't even see a copy on eBay.
Mortal Kombat 9 - The Complete Edition disc version acts as the standard edition sadly.
Dead or Alive Ultimate (1&2), 3, 4 - All games look fantastic, blown away by DoA2!

Sadly, they have stated this will be the last patch of titles for BC... WHY?! Clearly the reception for this has been immense and putting the games back on the store at least offers players a chance to buy them & give Xbox profit still... As far as i see it , it's a win-win scenario! I hope they reconsider and offer more at a later date as they're really putting Sony to shame with they stance on BC - & that comes from a big PlayStation fan.

I've also been on the hunt for more BC titles with the intention of replacing PS3 versions of games as running them on my Xbox One X is a lot more preferable.

[telekill]

I mean, power to you...but to write off an entire platform because of one games toxic community seems a bit overboard. On Playstation 3, the SoCom community was the worst I've ever seen. I just quit playing it online.

It was enough to have me sell off the first Xbox. At the time I had the Dreamcast, PS2 and Gamecube before it so Halo was the only reason for me to really own an Xbox. Each Xbox and the userbase for it from then on sold me on not buying that particular Xbox.

With the 360, I was waiting for the PS3 as I was only going to buy one system that gen. A 360 fan that worked at a Gamestop told me (after I had asked if they had any PS3's right after launch), that all PS3 games were going to be on 360 as well. A blatant lie. Then when I was considering a 360 a couple years later, my friends had all started getting the RRoD. It was a no go at that point.

With the X1... it was dead before release for me when Microsoft announced what their policies were going to be.

Only recently with the release of the XSeX does it have any appeal and that's because of their Bethesda acquisition; specifically for the upcoming Indiana Jones game. Given that Indy is at least a year off... maybe more... there's time for Microsoft to mess up something. Perhaps I'll get lucky and the new Indy game will also be on PS5 or at least PC. Time will tell.

[burningdoom]

Stoked about the 76 backwards compatible titles announced - some real gems added too!
NieR - Yes there was a remaster but I always liked being able to play as the older main character from this version.
TimeSplitters 2 & 3
Max Payne 1-3 - Can't get Max Payne 2's disc to work... hope they fix this.
Gunvalkayrie - I actually bought this digitally, I can't even see a copy on eBay.
Mortal Kombat 9 - The Complete Edition disc version acts as the standard edition sadly.
Dead or Alive Ultimate (1&2), 3, 4 - All games look fantastic, blown away by DoA2!

Sadly, they have stated this will be the last patch of titles for BC... WHY?! Clearly the reception for this has been immense and putting the games back on the store at least offers players a chance to buy them & give Xbox profit still... As far as i see it , it's a win-win scenario! I hope they reconsider and offer more at a later date as they're really putting Sony to shame with they stance on BC - & that comes from a big PlayStation fan.

I've also been on the hunt for more BC titles with the intention of replacing PS3 versions of games as running them on my Xbox One X is a lot more preferable.

They said the last one was the last one, too. So never say never.

[aliensstudios]

I just put a new disc assembly and clock capacitor in mine to get it functional again. I've been playing a lot of OutRun 2 on it. The system looks phenomenal on my 50" HDTV even today. I even ripped a bunch of music ads to the hard drive to test how well the new disc drive was working. Such a great system, and still very usable today. I like how you can still use some original discs even today for backward compatibility on the newer systems.

[gf78]

Xbox Series X is my favorite system currently. I love the backward compatibility,  smart delivery, interface and of course the games. The controller is the most comfortable for me and the system downloads much faster than my PS5 or Switch for that matter.

I still have an original Xbox. Great system that pushed gaming forward with the best graphics, the leader in online play and a HDD as standard.

[alligo]

Happy birthday ! 

Unfortunately, I never knew the very first xbox.

I started with the xbox 360 and it became my favorite console.
I continued with the xbox one, and I was not disappointed.

So far, mine has always been very reliable and I haven't had any problems except for the game drive that started to malfunction a bit. (it still works, but sometimes I have to reinsert the disk several times)

What I like about Microsoft is their system, the controllers and some accessories like the chatpad which is very useful.

[oldgamerz]

It's my newest console added to my collection, I got mine OG Xbox a couple of years ago, it's a nice machine, Of coarse I had to get the clock capacitor removed in it as soon as I got it it. I had it done for about $60 USD at a PC repair shop, it was just starting to leak the man said as soon as I brought it into the repair shop, that was 2 years ago I think, it's a nice gaming machine

[mrkonasoni]

Sincerely I believe the original Xbox deserved more praise and the other day I spent some time investigating the library of games I couldn't stop thinking the console had an overlooked number of interesting games that are stuck there because emulation for the console is troublesome and if you want to play them the only option is buy original hardware and hope it still works.

Xbox 360 was a good console with pretty good games but Microsoft kinda ruined it making the console pretty hard to repair and is pretty common read nowadays people that's confident their 360s just fail to work at all or need a disc drive replacement that unfortunately requires connect it to a PC because just change it could have been too easy, still it's a console I respect.

And well, Xbox One that sincerely is a good console and at times I miss when I used to play it all the time and collect for it, maybe the example that Microsoft learned or are learning from their mistakes.