Feature: Celebrating The 15th Anniversary Of The Xbox 360

Where is our Ridge Racer 6 BC for Xbox ONE? XD

Loved my 360. My first one eventually RROD. I then bought a second hand one from GAME that got banned. I took it back and spent more and got an Elite. Only sold that bad boy recently. Some amazing memories of playing online with friends. L4D, Borderlands and PES. Great fun.

Still my all time favorite console and still use mine regularly!

Love the 360, Those were the days..

Went through something like 8 360s! Was cursed by RROD! Still loved the console though.

I know this will be unpopular but I was not a fan of the xbox 360. I bought one at launch and remember playing Kameo on it.

I ended up liking the PS3 a lot more in that generation.

By the time the generation ended I had 25+ games for the PS3 and only a handful for the xbox 360.

The only platform exclusives I think I even played in for the xbox 360 were Kameo, Fable II and Naruto Rise of a Ninja.

On the other hand, my son loved it. He had many games for it.

That being said, the hardware issues were some of the worst I can remember. I have had at least 4 xbox 360's fail. 3 with the RROD and 1 with a failed drive. The lack of HDMI on the launch units was also painful.

I want to add something here, as someone in the United States.
It is easy to forget country borders when on the internet, because we see world-wide feedback and hype levels. But lets not forget a few points about how big XBox 360 was in North America:

In the US, the 360 sold 49.11 million units. The PS3 sold 29.42 million. That was a huge market advantage. Not only was it huge, but to this date, in the United States, the PS4 still has only sold 37.62 units. Nowhere near enough to catchup with the 360.

By the end of the generation, PS3 might had caught up with the 360 globally, but when it comes to the United States, the dominion was unquestionable.

To this date, the only consoles that have outsold the 360, in America, have been the PS2 (with 53.65 million units) and the Nintendo DS (with 57.39 million units.) The 360 even managed to outsell the Wii (45.51 million units!)

Despite it's terrible track record, the Xbox One still managed to sell 31.48 million in the US, that's 83.7% as many units as the PS4, not bad for a console considered "a total flop." It is obvious, in the US, XBox brand is still a strong one.

I cant wait to see how the Series X performs without being held back by the array of bad decisions at the start of the One generation.

@Tharsman the only recent console is call a total flop is the Wii U. But yeah the dominion the 360 had in America was absolutely undeniable. I find it impressive personally because OG XBox was late to the game and was competing against two companies that were absolute powerhouses at the time. They got a year head start on next gen sales and it paid off in a huge way.

@Tharsman Lots of interesting information there. Thanks for pointing these out.

@AJDarkstar yea, corrected it. I did mean PS2. Type that very rarely these days so Autocomplete overwrote me to PS4 without me noticing.

My early days with the 360 was just PDZ, Condemned, Quake 4, Oblivion and Halo 2 MP, and the fact that I can remember these experiences far clearer than many games from this gen just shows how fun they were.

All in all, I think the 7th gen was far stronger than the 8th. The amount of great new IPs that were born, the larger variety of gameplay styles, the lack of pervasive and design corrupting monetisation. I honestly think I've spent more time playing BC, remasters, remakes and sequels from the 360 and PS3 than I have actual new IPs.

@Richnj I think it feels like that in every generation. I mean, 4 of the 5 games you mentioned loving from 7th gen were sequels.

While there is no doubt that that there is more re-hashed IP in this generation than ever before but there are also a plenty of new things that came out of this generation. Although, many of those did not come to xbox. There is also just more games in total due to the emergence of so many indie game developers and the ease with which they can bring their games to consoles.

I had and Elite, S and still have my E model. Amazing system with so many wonderful games.

@evan23 Those games were, as mentioned, my early experiences. The rest of the gen brought far more in.

And it's not just new vs old IPs. It's also old vs new titles. As examples, I played more Halo 3 and Reach than I did Halo CE or 2, but during the 8th gen have also played more Halo 3 than I did Halo 5. Played more Mass Effect 1, than the xbox one version, played more FO 3 and New Vegas, Skyrim than FO4, more Borderlands 1, 2 and PS than BL3, more Rage than Rage 2, Far Cry 3 and 4 more than Far Cry 5, and that list could go on.

There's obviously some great new IPs and entries but Indie devs aside, I'd be hard pressed to name them.

I got a 360 in 2008, when I came back from Iraq. It was an awesome console and one of my favorites. PS3 was my favorite PS console and I loved my Wii, as well as my DS. Hell, PSP was a great system. That was an awesome console generation.

Got my Xbox 360 from Game Rush inside Blockbuster with a collector's edition of Oblivion. I'm not sure I've ever typed a more 2005 sentence.

There is a strong arguement for the Xbox 360 being the greatest home console of all time. It had such a breadth of games that even Microsoft themselves failed to repeat it with the X1.

Happy birthday X360! Can't believe it's been 15 years...yikes. I waited until the Elite model was out to buy mine, but it was a great console.

Probably the best console ever launched. I am yet to try any of the new gen models BTW.
Can’t remember when I first got mine, then had another three due to RROD before giving up and getting a PS3. But I then got as a bday present the 360S and loved it! Helped me prefer Xbox to PlayStation for all those action games..

@StrangeBit They are going to show the giant enemy crab first......

That was such a weird gen. It was the land of the endless brown shooter, where console gamers "discovered" shooters, and that seemed like the only games around. Always in brown. Always series, attempts at realistic worlds, and the absence of Japanese devs almost entirely as they failed to make the HD jump until years later.

8th gen on the other hand re-gained Japan, which made it better at the surface, but Western creativity dropped off a cliff and became Ubisoft type "open world" games everywhere. I loved the genre at first, but it wore itself out very fast. I thought I was glad when 7th gen ended, but I think I preferred it to this past one.

I got X360 mid-gen. I didn't really want one at first. I went with PS3 and while at first I loved it, I quickly learned that almost everything third party was either a slideshow, a blurry smear, or both, and that 360 was the lead console. I ended up getting an X360, but had to wait a while until RROD was solved since it was in full swing by the time I was interested. I ended up paying more, getting an Arcade unit, and bought the HDD separately, as, at the time it was the only way to get a guaranteed Jasper.

I ended up loving the console and playing it much more than PS3. The cycle would repeat the following gen when XBone was a joke and I went with PS4....then years later got the 1X and ended up rebuying half my PS4 library on X1.

This time I did the only logical thing. I bought both.

I still remember the soul crushing dashboard update when they added advertising to the main page...

@Tharsman That's some really good info. I keep hearing the narrative about how PS3 outsold everything, eventually, after the generation ended and they were selling the bargain basement model made out of recycled milk bottles after MS stopped selling X360 at all and Nintendo was selling the internet-less Wii for $99. But I hadn't heard how stark 360 was ahead in the US.

I really really dislike what the internet has done - just what "they" wanted - tried to turn the whole earth into a monoculture that acts as a giant consumer market. We get misnomers like this where the regional reality is just omitted from data and replaced with the "global" narrative. I don't really care what's popular in Nicaragua. I don't live in Nicaragua. But Sony's numbers tell us they win, because they won in Nicaragua and Togo, and the numbers combine to more than 360.

In my opinion the 360 was one of the great consoles. It just ticked all the boxes for me. Great games, great online with friends, some great unique experiences like 1 v 100 and last of all I loved a lot of what came to XBLA especially in the early days.

As for the games I hope more 360 games get added to back compat so I can finally put the 360 to rest.

I loved it. But it also started the trend of DLC and microtransactions in full price games. Including first party games which should be a big no-no.

Hi there fellow gamers.
I got my Xbox 360 day one with Perfect dark Zero, Kameo: Elements of Power and Project Gotham Racing 3.
I enjoyed the first two games, but it was PGR3 alonside with Test Drive Unlimited loved the most.
Two of the best racing games I´ve played.
Then Dead or Alive 4, Ninja Gaiden 2(man those games were hardcore and awesome).
Playing the brand new IPs Lost Planet, Gears of War, Mass Effect and Bioshock was some of the best memories that I have from my 360, wich in my oppinion, was the best Xbox and one of my favourite consoles.
Happy 15th Anniversary Xbox 360. You were fantastic.
Cheers, stay safe and happy next gen gaming to us all

The first half of the 360’s life was superb as ms were so focused on the gamer but they totally dropped the ball the second half of its life focusing on Kinect. I ended up selling mine for a PS3 as that had so many exclusives at the time...

Fired up Perfect Dark Zero for some nostalgia on the Series X and the club level still looks pretty good with practically no loading time.