Four Years of the Xbox 360

Leave a Comment Posted November 22, 2009 - By Sterling McGarvey

Xbox 360

November isn’t just a time for big games to launch. It’s traditionally a time when game consoles make their big splash in the States. With the exception of the PlayStation 2 and the PSP, every major game console of this decade has launched in November in the US. Four years ago today, Microsoft kicked off the “next generation” of video games by releasing the Xbox 360. Time sure does fly when you're watching people on your friends list having fun. Like the PlayStation 3, Wii, and Nintendo DS, I’m taking a look at the history of the platform, and the prognosis for the coming year. Let's start with the horoscope:

“You will be enthusiastic, frank, sincere, upright. You will finally realize your plans, after long and painstaking work, thanks to your patience, to your experience, which you have always known how to use, to your common sense and also because you have never lost sight of your objective.”

Microsoft certainly stuck to their overall plan for the Xbox brand, and though the Wii is currently in the driver's seat (and who saw that one coming?), the 360's got the upper hand over the PS3, thanks to launching first and securing third-party support.

The Specs
Launch Date: November 22, 2005 (United States)
Launch Price: $399.99 (Pro model), $299.99 (Core model)

Significant Price Drops and Hardware Iterations

Possibly thanks to the higher entry price for hardware this generation, both Sony and Microsoft have tinkered with hardware and prices to a degree seldom seen in console sales prior. One thing’s for sure: it makes for some insane research.

Xbox 360 Elite (released April 2007) was the first iteration of Xbox 360 hardware supporting HDMI output and a 120 GB hard drive. It retailed at $479.99. Later in 2007, HDMI output became standard across all Xbox 360 models, even if the chipsets have continued to evolve at a headache-inducing rate.

In August 2007, Microsoft made its first price cuts to Xbox 360. The Core Xbox 360 dropped to $279.99, the Pro dropped to $349.99, and the Elite experienced a dramatic $30 price cut. A few months later, the Core Xbox 360 SKU was eliminated and replaced with the Xbox 360 Arcade model, which features a memory unit instead of a hard drive.

In July 2008, the Pro Xbox 360 SKU dropped to $299.99 in preparation for a 60 GB model, which released a month later at $349.99.

In September 2008, the price of all Xbox 360 SKUs dropped. The Arcade unit dropped to $199.99, the Pro dropped to $299.99, and the Elite saw a bigger drop to $399.99. People who bought an Xbox 360 within six weeks of the platform-wide price cuts were officially pissed.

In August 2009, the Xbox 360 Pro model was discontinued and the price fell to $249.99. The Elite model fell to $299.99. I wonder how many Pro consoles are still sitting on shelves to this day. Recently, a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2-themed Xbox 360 Elite launched with a 250 GB hard drive for $399.99. As of the Xbox 360’s fourth anniversary, Microsoft has positioned the Arcade and Elite as its core models for the platform. And I need a break to go get a glass of water.

Games of Note

Year One: 2005-2006

Year Two: 2006-2007

Year Three: 2007-2008

Year Four: 2008-2009

Features That Made It Better

Like the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 has seen many updates, most of which have improved the user experience dramatically since November 2005. Because Microsoft got to market first, it set plenty of standards (which gamers have fairly or unfairly leveraged as ammunition against other platforms). It’s easier to name them by date than number, for those keeping track. Here’s a look at them:

June 2006: Allowed for background downloading of multiple content items. Anyone with a launch console can tell you why it was a godsend, and why everyone who also got a PS3 at launch was annoyed that Sony didn’t have it on release day. Also let you choose to stay in the Dashboard when popping a disc in. I’ve never changed that setting on my console to this day.

Halloween 2006: Updated consoles to support 1080p video, Zune, the HD-DVD external drive, WMV file support. Boy, that HD-DVD support sure seems quaint these days, doesn’t it? The 1080p support, however, is no laughing matter now that HDTV adoption is significantly higher than it was in Fall 2006.

Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive

May 2007: Low-power background downloading, more specific “Achievement Unlocked” details, new Dashboard blade for Marketplace.

December 2007: Friend of friend lists on Xbox Live (and improved privacy settings), overall efficiency improvements.

November 2008: On the eve of the Xbox 360’s third anniversary, the New Xbox Experience debuted with all of the hype and fanfare of a first-party game release. Aside from a complete overhaul of the Xbox 360 Dashboard, NXE introduced avatars. Initially derided as a blatant Mii rip-off, avatars are actually nothing like Miis. Nintendo never tried to monetize your virtual icon by offering up a digital plush mushroom to toy around with.

But there were plenty of real game-changers alongside the obvious avatar implementation. Netflix, for one, saw a spike in new users thanks to the Netflix app that launched with NXE. And the install-to-hard drive option very quickly gave Elite owners something to fill their previously spacious drives. Plus, the Party system made multiplayer gaming much more convenient.

August 2009: As Microsoft got closer to its fourth anniversary, updates seemed to come more frequently than the massive gap between the December 07 update and NXE. With the summer update, Microsoft added more features to Netflix, a marketplace to swag-out your avatar, and allowed you to point out to all of your online buddies that you’ve been an Xbox Live member way long than them.

November 2009: Within a week of the fourth anniversary, Microsoft released a multimedia-focused update. The Xbox 360 now supports both Twitter and Facebook on consoles. It remains to be seen how effectively both will integrate into the gaming experience. The real crown jewels of the update, however, are streaming HD on-demand video content (which should make cable providers poop their pants) and Last.fm, which allows users to stream a random selection of music through their consoles. It’s good for dinner parties, if you actually invite friends over to eat and chit chat.

Things We'll Try to Forget

Platform-exclusive downloadable content as the wave of the future. Although Episodes From Liberty City is indisputably one of the finest game experiences of 2009, nearly every third-party exclusive is expected to be timed at this point. Ask all of the PS3 owners who have Fallout 3. Games are very expensive to produce (and market) these days, so on one hand, your flame war is defined by exclusives, and on another, it’s invalidated within a year. Microsoft’s strategy ripped plenty of pages from the PS2 playbook, but 100% true platform exclusive games are rapidly becoming a myth. It’s easier to just pass off third-party games as optimal for the platform (read: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2-branded consoles).
Splinter Cell: Double Agent being better on Xbox than on Xbox 360.
The point at which Microsoft quietly strangled updates for Xbox games. I still want to play my copy of Psi-Ops again.
The following quote: “I bought my Xbox 360 on launch day, and I’ve never had any problems with it.” The Xbox 360 is the second coming of the PlayStation 2 in more than one way. Disc Read Error, meet Red Ring of Death.

Red Ring of Death

Once upon a time, you could buy stuff on Xbox Live with real money, like Halo 2 and Rainbow Six 3 maps.
The feedback system is as good for dealing with the dregs of online gaming as the League of Nations was at maintaining global peace.
Piracy is a ban-worthy offense, but the greatest extremes of irresponsible behavior are not.

Things Console Warriors Might Forget (But Shouldn't)

Trash talk 360 owners who’ve replaced several consoles; they’ve got as much brand loyalty as you, and they’re too busy gaming to argue with you over the Internet about it.
The concept of the Gamerscore is one of the happiest accidents of this era. It has resurrected the idea of the high score for a new generation. And although I’ve split my time between trophies and Achievements, I still play a lot of games to up my Gamerscore.

Achievement Unlocked

Xbox Live has its minuses, but the pluses are huge. From the amount of NXE content to a user experience that’s easier to maneuver (and game updates take seconds instead of minutes to download), there’s an incentive to multiplayer gaming on Xbox 360.
I’ll paraphrase my statement from the PS3 anniversary:

“Unless you’re a sulky teenager whose game purchases are dictated by your parent’s wallet, the cheaper Xbox 360 Elite (which comes in at close to half the launch price) has enabled more gamers to become multi-console owners, and roughly at the same time in the console’s life cycle that many gamers adopted a second console in the last generation. GTA: San Andreas and Halo 2 pushed many a gamer to bring a second console home five years ago. If you’re a PS3 owner, this may very well be the year to take the plunge.”

Prognosis for Year Five: 2009-2010

Positive. Microsoft is coming off a weaker year for first-party than in the past, but even then, it’s hardly been a disaster. Even if Sony begins to catch up sales-wise, the market penetration is established, and people are buying lots of games primarily for Xbox 360. Microsoft made no bones about emulating many of the practices that made the PS2 so successful (getting to market first, hardware clunks be damned), and it’s a big part of why the console’s still on top.

Hopefully Alan Wake will deliver the goods after an exceptionally long production cycle, and we’ll discover more about Halo: Reach in the coming months. Of course, one can’t look to the upcoming year without mentioning Project Natal. It looks amazing (and playing a prototype of Burnout Paradise on it was fairly kick-ass), and if the tech delivers, it could be a big difference-maker.

Project Natal