Former Xbox Boss Talks Building The 'Innovative' Xbox 360 Console

@CrazyJF
Great moment. And when you had to make THE decision. Cya Kaiden.

Amped 2 on Live. So much fun! Never played online as much since then.

I know it was for OG Xbox but the community blossomed when it was playable on 360

My standout memory of Xbox 360 was the day I bought the console. It was about 2 weeks after launch, I was home from college for Thanksgiving break, got back to the house, set everything up and dove right into some PGR 3 and it was an awesome experience. Fantastic graphics, even on the older non-hd tv I had, and eventhough multiplayer was the draw for many, I had lots of fun with the single player.
Another standout memory was the launch of my favorite game from that era, Halo 3. That series showing up on the then current-gen was a huge deal, and it was the first time I went to a midnight launch for anything game related.

My main memory of getting a 360 is buying one, bought one of eBay a couple of months after launch for £100 less than retail, the guy didn't plan the auction very well, it finished at 7am on New Years Day!

Left 4 Dead was a game that really stand out for me on the 360. I had hours of endless fun and great conversations with most of the people I met playing it.

So many great games, its tough to pick a fave. Maybe Halo 3 as I loved that one and havent really got on with that franchise since.

But I had 4 machines rrod on me so its tough to remember the great times, and I used the machine less and less as it kept breaking on me. At least thats no longer a concern with series x, I get the impression I could hit that with a sledgehammer and it would still work 😂

It was definitely better than the PS3 for me except the gold requirement for online

The 360 really is massively underrated for its innovations IMHO. I think the RROD problem overshadowed all of the clever hardware and software features.

The 360 gave us the first standard wireless controller (the WaveBird wasn’t packaged with the GC) and it also enabled you to turn the console on and off.

Achievements were a new idea that took Sony several years to copy. The Guide button and the ability to jump into the blades view while still running a game was also very unique, especially when they supported custom soundtracks back then. Being able to download games and demos was a new thing on consoles back then too.

Then there was the eDRAM which allowed the 360 to really punch above its weight and offer easy anti-aliasing where the PS3 struggled to do the same, forcing developers to come up with clever software alternatives.

Plus the 360’s Xenos graphics chip had the unified shader architecture before even PC graphics cards. I remember Tomb Raider Legend ran way better on 360 than my PC at the time.

Then there was the modular hardware design. I remember the 360 was criticised for not having a hard drive or Wi-Fi out of the box, but it did mean people could buy a console for less and add those things on later, making the console much more affordable than the eye watering PS3 price.

I think the custom covers you could buy were great too, it really allowed people to personalise their console. Microsoft still have some of that with their custom controller design website.

So, I really do think MS were incredibly inventive with the 360, I was actually quite disappointed that the Xbox One didn’t manage to live up to that standard (other than TV, TV, TV).

I got bad company and gta 4 with my console. Playing online for the first time was amazing. But my best memories are playing co op gears 2 on horde with my friends with a crate of beer trying to get to wave 50 with clever use of the shield.

We recently bought a 360 again for my 6 year old daughter, my 360 was stolen back in the day, but still had a lot of physical discs left, this 'new' one is in pristine state, including kinect which my daughter is gonna love, even the packaging is still immaculate , paid 50 bucks for it including ten games, so other than the OG, we got the whole lineup in our house.