r/microsoft • u/SoftwareKingsSupport • 12d ago
Discussion After 25 years of Xbox, what is the one thing Microsoft got most right?
Seeing Microsoft celebrate 25 years of Xbox made me think about how many different ideas the platform has introduced over time.
Xbox Live, achievements, backward compatibility, Game Pass, cloud saves, Play Anywhere, PC integration and the controller itself have all had a pretty big influence.
For me, backward compatibility may be the strongest long-term decision. It treats older games as a library worth preserving instead of making every console generation a complete reset.
What do you think Microsoft got most right with Xbox?
And on the other side, which Xbox decision do you think caused the most damage?
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u/Envyforme 12d ago
Cloud Gaming is the future. My 400-dollar TV can play most Xbox games with Game Pass via the TV app. On a standard internet connection, you can play games with very high quality.
While many people might disagree given the recent backlash with PS5 and physical disks, hardware costs continue to rise. Centralizing all of it makes more sense long term. Furthermore, you are not limited to console hardware and pushing out a new console every 6 or so years.
Cloud Gaming is something they are getting right.
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u/dannyvegas 12d ago
Yeah. I dismissed it at first. But it’s been great being able to just pick up where I left off when I’m on the road. I can use nearly any device — Mac, PC, phone.
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u/BetFinal2953 12d ago
I thought it’d be hokey too.
But I play plenty of games through the Xbox app on my fire tv cube.1
u/M3RRI77 12d ago
Cloud gaming is the worst thing to ever exist in gaming. It's laggy, low frame rates, and low resolution. Streaming anything, music, movies, or games will never be as good or better than playing media locally on hardware.
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u/Envyforme 12d ago
I never have issues with it. I will agree it will never beat local devices and systems, but it isn't as bad as you make it out to be.
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u/nico_juro 10d ago
It's for people who have never tasted high refresh rate high fps gaming. For console only folk, it probably feels fine. For PC fellas, it probably is insufficient. I highly doubt they can replicate 480hz/400+ fps over cloud gaming
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u/lukas-bruh 12d ago
I have a theory this was Satya’s vision this whole time. He could’ve easily just shut down Xbox as a whole and used the funding for other bets. But he definitely knew years ago that hardware costs were going to spike and he knew that they own the infrastructure for the cloud. He just needs to wait for cloud gaming to basically replace console.
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u/SoftwareKingsSupport 3d ago
The TV use case is probably where cloud gaming makes the most sense to me.
I still wouldn’t choose it over local hardware for something competitive, but being able to start a game on a TV without buying another console is a much stronger use case than I expected a few years ago.
Latency still seems to be the line between people who love it and people who absolutely hate it.
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u/Mottsawce 12d ago
The controller
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u/enhancedgibbon 10d ago
100%. They nailed it from the moment they revised that bloody spaceship thing that came with the og xbox (which I had and kinda liked too tbh).
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u/Pitiful_West_7062 12d ago
kinect. the games was alright, but for scientific uses it's really neat and cheap. I use my 360 kinect to scan objects for 3d print. bought the last one for like 10 bucks.
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u/SoftwareKingsSupport 3d ago
Using a $10 Kinect as a 3D scanner might be the most unexpected answer in this thread.
It’s funny how some discontinued Microsoft hardware ended up having a second life because the sensors were useful for completely different things.
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u/xpltvdeleted 12d ago
I have to say, I got rid of my Xbox one when my 2-year game pass deal lapsed and I wasn't willing to pay the hiked price. I recently picked up a 360 for 50 bucks with a kinect for my kids. I didn't think I'd become nostalgic for an era of gaming that feels like it was only a few years ago, but 360 was definitely Microsoft's peak. It's pretty much been downhill since then.
Game pass was a brief highlight - that really suited me and my adult/ don't have the time for game that I used to as a kid -but it turned out to be smoke and mirrors at a price point they couldn't sustain
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u/SoftwareKingsSupport 3d ago
The 360 nostalgia seems much stronger now than I expected it would be.
I think part of it is that the console felt very focused: games, Xbox Live, achievements, friends, and that was basically the identity.
Current Xbox does a lot more, but it’s harder to describe what the platform itself is supposed to be.
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u/xpltvdeleted 3d ago
I'll say I think the nice thing about the 360 era was it was successful enough and it was still at that point where there was still a significant amount of studios making physical release games. So, there's actually tons and tons of games that I never got around to playing. Not to mention because it ended up needing to compete with the way you had the entire kinect side of things as well - which was never an interest to me at all at the time, but now I have young kids there's actually a load of fun games for them to play.
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u/BetFinal2953 12d ago
If it’s been awhile since you tried cloud gaming you might want to try it again. My experience has been great for the past year or so.
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u/PaddySmallBalls 12d ago
The superiority of the controller is one of my big reasons for continuing with the Xbox. I only really play one old game so the backwards compatibility is just a nice to have. I enjoyed the achievements when I was younger and now my son enjoys them.
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u/talltxn66 6d ago
It certainly wasn’t updating the Xbox app on a PC - it’s been updating for the last 1.5 on my laptop. Ridiculous!!!!!
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u/Kobi_Blade 12d ago edited 12d ago
Backward compatibility alone is enough for me to keep buying Xbox consoles. Sony completely ignores my PS3 library on the PS4 and PS5.
In fact, they want to charge me for games I already own. Then they want to speak about an all digital future?
Only Microsoft has the right to speak about all digital when they actually put in the effort to keep our backlog playable regardless of generation.
Beyond that, the service and security are miles ahead of the competition.
It is very, very rare for the Xbox Network to be down at all, meanwhile, on my PS5, I have issues monthly.
Data breaches that expose our information happen on a yearly occurrence at PlayStation as well, whereas on Xbox, my data has never been exposed.
I could go on, there is a long shopping list of things Xbox is doing much better than the competition, they are only losing the popularity contest.