“Kinect is going to be the future of gaming!” Except this is the only generation that is going to natively support it. But hey, Apple will shrink it down, put it in a phone, and use it to authenticate you. That’s not nearly as fun as using it for dancing and rafting though.
360 era DLC was just more game to tide you over while you waited for the sequel. But then they realised they could cut half the game and sell it as DLC later on. But then they realised they didn’t want to wait for later on and started selling half the game over the counter and half the game from inside the game.
Fifa Ultimate Team was already going strong on 360. Started all the way back in 2009, but the insane gambling player packs came a little later.
CS: GO cases technically started during Xbox 360’s life cycle (a little short of 2 years before Xbox One launched), although the game was PC only.
As others have mentioned - Oblivion horse armor DLC was already a thing.
Microsoft first introduced paywalled online functionality with Xbox 360’s Xbox Live subscription.
You could add some more to the list. By this time gaming was already going downhill. What you remember as the ‘last great console generation’ is probably just nostalgia. Although you could make a case that early Xbox 360 days were pretty great.
I didn’t play the full generation. I moved to PC in 2009 so I dodged the worst part of the generation. I also wouldn’t say it was the best generation. The reason I would say it was the last good one is the lack of a required install. You could buy a game, then start playing it right away. If I have to sit through an install, I might as well just play on PC.
Only PSN was free, Xbox live was always paid. Like, this was a huge argument Playstation fanboys held over the heads of Xbox fanboys during the console wars
And you didn’t even get better service for your money, since many Xbox live games didn’t have dedicated servers and instead used P2P technology (which, to be fair, was also the case on PS3)
Xbox Live didn’t have much higher tech, no, but they (at least according to them at the time) invested the money on the community side. If you reported dingdongs, there was a chance, however remote, that a real live person read the report and applied banhammer or something. And the first party titles like Halo did have community manager folks running the bread and circuses.
One of the things that really started to make me think Xbox was becoming more bland when most of the community stuff moved away from Xbox/in-game side to the game websites and Twitch (the latter especially after Mixer died). And, yeah, the player reports? Not really much of use, unless someone is blatantly cheating or spamming.
Damn right they are. Probably the last great console generation before modern monetization practices fully took hold.
“Kinect is going to be the future of gaming!” Except this is the only generation that is going to natively support it. But hey, Apple will shrink it down, put it in a phone, and use it to authenticate you. That’s not nearly as fun as using it for dancing and rafting though.
We were well into horse armor by this point
It was the start of it, but it wasn’t common practice, at least not towards the beginning of the generation.
It was the first generation for DLC to be more common, but it felt like an addition and not just restoring intentionally cut content.
I do agree that towards the end of the generation, some of the greedier companies started some of their worst practices.
360 era DLC was just more game to tide you over while you waited for the sequel. But then they realised they could cut half the game and sell it as DLC later on. But then they realised they didn’t want to wait for later on and started selling half the game over the counter and half the game from inside the game.
Too late.
Fifa Ultimate Team was already going strong on 360. Started all the way back in 2009, but the insane gambling player packs came a little later.
CS: GO cases technically started during Xbox 360’s life cycle (a little short of 2 years before Xbox One launched), although the game was PC only.
As others have mentioned - Oblivion horse armor DLC was already a thing.
Microsoft first introduced paywalled online functionality with Xbox 360’s Xbox Live subscription.
You could add some more to the list. By this time gaming was already going downhill. What you remember as the ‘last great console generation’ is probably just nostalgia. Although you could make a case that early Xbox 360 days were pretty great.
I didn’t play the full generation. I moved to PC in 2009 so I dodged the worst part of the generation. I also wouldn’t say it was the best generation. The reason I would say it was the last good one is the lack of a required install. You could buy a game, then start playing it right away. If I have to sit through an install, I might as well just play on PC.
Xbox Live started with the original Xbox
But it wasn’t strictly paid on the original Xbox, was it? Or am I misremembering?
Only PSN was free, Xbox live was always paid. Like, this was a huge argument Playstation fanboys held over the heads of Xbox fanboys during the console wars
And you didn’t even get better service for your money, since many Xbox live games didn’t have dedicated servers and instead used P2P technology (which, to be fair, was also the case on PS3)
Xbox Live didn’t have much higher tech, no, but they (at least according to them at the time) invested the money on the community side. If you reported dingdongs, there was a chance, however remote, that a real live person read the report and applied banhammer or something. And the first party titles like Halo did have community manager folks running the bread and circuses.
One of the things that really started to make me think Xbox was becoming more bland when most of the community stuff moved away from Xbox/in-game side to the game websites and Twitch (the latter especially after Mixer died). And, yeah, the player reports? Not really much of use, unless someone is blatantly cheating or spamming.
Xbox Live was always a paid service.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/09/xbox-live-through-the-years
https://news.microsoft.com/source/2002/08/13/xbox-live-to-launch-on-one-year-anniversary-of-console-launch/
Huh, looks like I got something mixed up then. Thanks for the correction.
I am pretty sure my parents had to pay $10/mo or whatever for me to lose all those matches in MechAssault.
The last console I ever purchased.