Xbox is growing up, and into something I don’t want anymore.
I have played on Xbox for a long time, starting with an original Xbox, as a kid. That was a hand-me-down, and I distinctly remember begging my mum for an Xbox 360 (then subsequently a second 360 when the first one got hit with a distinct maroon circle). I have (fond?) memories of playing on an Xbox 360 without its case and with the window open to stop it from overheating, and jamming things into the disk tray or banging the top to open it so I can pop in the new Call of Duty game.
I even bought an Xbox Series X in 2020 against my better judgment, and it has been demoted to a device I use to access Xbox Game Pass every couple of months when something I really want hits the service.
This is all to say, despite good memories of the Xbox brand, things have been going slowly downhill for my appreciation of it, and for the first time ever, I plan on skipping whatever Microsoft puts out next.
In the latter half of 2024, Microsoft unveiled its ‘This is an Xbox’ marketing campaign. In it, we see an Xbox (naturally) running Xbox Game Pass, alongside a laptop, mobile phone, and even a Steam Deck. The declaration is clear here: ‘the future is cloud streaming’. Naturally, marketing is at least half bluster, but the 11 months since have seen Microsoft thoroughly commit to this messaging.
In fact, many new game trailers don’t just say the game is coming to Xbox, they say it is coming to ‘Xbox Series X |S, Xbox PC, and Xbox Cloud’. The Cloud isn’t just a way to play the game, but a marketing point in game trailers.
Microsoft’s game plan seems to be getting Xbox on everything, rather than getting everyone on Xbox. Exclusives, in the traditional sense, don’t really exist anymore for Microsoft. If you are a PC gamer, you miss practically nothing from the company’s large roster of game studios, but this is even mostly true if you have a PlayStation 5.
The broader games industry at large is moving in this direction, with the majority of the PS5’s exclusive catalogue being available to play on PC (perhaps after a short wait). So, in a sense, the point of consoles is not to compete with PC but with other consoles, which is what surprises me so much about Xbox’s strategy. You can functionally own a PlayStation and a PC, and get some use out of both.
Choosing a single console between Sony and Microsoft, I find the Dualsense and its pretty whacky haptics to offer something genuinely quite different to the rest of the market. I also prefer Sony’s UI, trophy system, and social functions. Plus, exclusives stay on it for an allotted time, so it’s the only way to play a handful of pretty great games a year or so early. Both console generations have controllers weak to stick drift, which is a huge shame, as the 8BitDo Pro 3 hooked up to my PC wipes the floor with both of them when it comes to ease of use.
