Xbox One is 2 Years Old Today; Here's Its Highs, Lows, and Everything In Between

The Xbox One has just turned two years old today. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been cursing the Kinect for that long, isn’t it? In all seriousness though, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Xbox One over the past couple of years, and like any infant, it’s starting to find its walking feet. Released on November 22nd, 2013, the Xbox One promised to be a monumental upgrade from the immensely popular Xbox 360. It hasn’t been smooth sailing though, but we’ve had some really great moments thanks to the hard work of Microsoft’s Xbox team. Cheers ladies and gents.

The Highs

DRM Turnaround

When Microsoft came out and announced the Xbox One as the successor to the Xbox 360, it didn’t do it in the best fashion. Microsoft instead stuck its middle finger up at - not gamers, but consumers. The DRM policies the firm wanted to enable sounded downright barbaric, but gamers soon let Microsoft know they wouldn’t stand for it. Thankfully, then, the firm did a 180-turn on the piss-poor policies and made everyone happy again. We still have nightmares of Don Mattrick’s face sometimes, and that’s something we’ll never forgive.

Sunset Overdrive

This one came out of nowhere - at least in The Games Cabin’s rickety shack. We didn’t really see it as being much more than some colourful shooter to appeal to the ADHD crowd of gamers. Bloody hell; we couldn’t have been more mistaken. Insomniac Games’ Sunset Overdrive was cracking, colourful fun that still endures to this day. A sequel isn’t off the cards, either.

Backwards Compatibility, and Pretty Much All of E3 2015

Microsoft’s E3 presentation went down a storm with the Xbox faithful. If you look closely at one of the recorded videos from the show, you’ll actually see someone passing out as Microsoft announced the backwards compatibility feature. That wasn’t the only bomb to drop during its press conference as Microsoft also announced that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was real (we leaked that well before though, sorry MS…) and that the beta would be going live that very day. If you look closely at the recorded conference, you’ll actually see no fewer than five fans pass out from excitement while one dude seems to be rocking a solid-stiffy. Dirty sod.

Forza Motorsport 6

Forza once again set the bar for racing simulators and boy, did it do it in style. The game looked picture perfect and ran at the coveted 60fps to deliver the smoothest racing experience available on consoles today. Shame about the recently added microtransactions though.

The Lows

Christmas 2014 and the Days of Darkness

Christmas 2014 still gives us lot the shakes. Not only do we remember some pretty vivid images of granny having a few too many bevvies, but we also remember not being able to play online and dish out abuse to our friends using party chat. It was terrible. We had to actually text, and when we didn’t get the instant gratification of a response, we had to actually call. Yuck. It was dire times for both Xbox One and PS4 users. Oddly enough, it was a time of peace during the retarded “console war” that is supposedly going on. Gamers united in their hatred for the bellends that called themselves the Lizard somethings - they’ve actually faded from memory quite well. The service still isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s been a long time since we’ve threatened to make the Wii U our go-to console for online gaming.

900p, 720p, Pretty Much Every Multi-Plat Release

There’s something of a snobbery contest going on between Xbox One and PS4 players. It’s common place these days to see multi-platform games run at higher resolutions on Sony’s machine, and unfortunately it’s something that people feel the need to brag about. Granted, it’s disappointing to see a bit of disparity between the consoles, but at the end of the day the game’s are still awesome and Xbox fans needn’t worry. However, as time pushes us further towards our eventual muddy graves, the disparity may become more apparent than it is now. Xbox does have one saving grace though: The Cloud, but we’ve yet to really see it rain down the goodies.

The YouTube Scandal

Back during the console’s launch, Microsoft entered into a somewhat shady deal with Youtubers that ended up costing more than a pretty penny. Practically every media outlet went all-out on Microsoft’s decision to pay Youtubers handsomely for promoting their latest home console. Yeah, it was a bit sly and we can see where the critics were coming from, but at the same time it’s not like they murdered anyone. Still, let’s not have these kinds of things in the future, yeah?

Call of Duty Packing Its Bags and Moving Out

Call of Duty and the Xbox brand have been together for a long time. During the entire last-gen Xbox was the home of Call of Duty. Xbox 360 owners could look forward to being the first to have the latest DLC’s while their counterparts waited a month. It was undoubtedly a good deal for both parties, but all good things must come to an end. So it did, and Call of Duty shifted sticks and moved into Sony’s back yard. The Xbox faithful who’ve stuck by the brand since its inception were pretty pissed to learn that the exclusivity that they’ve enjoyed for years has now been handed over to the opposition. Sour times. Sour times indeed.

The Constant Bashing

Sales numbers. What do you know about them? Do they matter to you? Okay, maybe in your region (USA, UK, EU) it might be mildly interesting to see what games are the hottest. That’s fine, cool. What isn’t fine or cool is that certain outlets take the weekly games charts and sales numbers as an invitation to push their own agendas. We all know that Microsoft hasn’t been able to sell as many consoles as the PS4, so it’s unsurprising to hear that a big multi-plat game has sold far more on Sony’s machine. It’s simple maths, so simple that it seems to confound some half-wits into turning everything into a shitty headline for the sake of hits. It gets even worse and shows true desperation when said sites are then scouring the Japanese sales charts to create a clickbait headline that puts the diss on the Xbox One for no reason other than to get the fanboys’ knickers’ in twists. The Xbox One has been doing woeful in the region, but that was the case with the Xbox 360, too, so it’s not surprising. In short: Shit websites creating shit stories to shit on the Xbox One while making the PS4 look ace. The worst part is that these websites are multi-plat websites that supposedly have no allegiance to either party. Make of that what you will.

The In Between

Hololens

It had a great showing at E3, but since then we’ve not really heard or seen much of the wearable tech. With Microsoft’s main competitor, Sony, currently going all-out with the PlayStation VR, we expected to see something from Microsoft in reply. But no. Zip. Nilch. Nada. It was an impressive tech-demo, sure, but until we see something a bit more impressive that isn’t restricted to an environment dictated by Microsoft, we’ll be holding our reservations on this one.

The Xbox One Elite Controller and Its Wallet Biting Price

Eeek! The Xbox One Elite controller is everything you’d want from a gamepad: you can customise the entire controller layout to your liking. It’s particularly useful for players with impediments to their hands and fingers as it offers workarounds for control inputs. It’s something we’ve actually moaned about in the past, but it’s nice to see such a controller come to the market. Unfortunately it’s not cheap at over $100, more than double the price of a regular Xbox One gamepad. We still found it to be a nice fit in the hand though after going hands-on at E3 2015, but whether it’s worth that much is dependent on the person.

Xbox Live, Games With Gold, and Not So Good Sales

Xbox Live has improved since its birth over a decade ago. Since then it’s become a service that puts you in the game and lets you get the most out of your console. Happy days. It’s also evolved to compete with the competition (PS Plus) by offering a selection of games for free each month. There are also regular sales. All sounds good, doesn’t it? Except it’s not all rosy. We’ve had some cracking games given out as freebies, but then we’ve also had months that were barren. We’ve had great service from Xbox Live for months on end, only to have that ruined by a couple of days of dodgy connections. And we’ve had great sales that saved us a few quid, but we’ve also had duds that put the oldest, crappiest, and least money-worthy games on sale for 10% off. Cheers? Just like PS Plus, Xbox Live is struggling to keep its audience happy, but it does more right than it does wrong, so we’ll give it that. There’s still room for improvement though, and this is something we’ll look back on when the Xbox One turns 3.

---

Two years, huh? Doesn’t feel like a week’s gone by since we were gleefully spinning around like a graviton in Sunset Overdrive. It’s been fun, it’s been maddening, but more the former than the latter. What about you? Have you enjoyed the Xbox One’s baby years? What are you looking forward to seeing next year when the console has matured a little? Shout all about it in the comments below.