Historical impact of the Xbox 360 ?

[Splatterhouse5]

Xbox360, the first console to prove that even though your hardware is an overheating piece of shit it will still sell millions.

Xbox360, the first console to prove that people have no problem buying a 2nd one after the first one dies, and then a third one and a fourth one.

(seriously you wouldn't believe how often I've read stories of people telling how they are on their 5th 360) (and they aren't even angry)

Xbox360, the first console to prove that humanity is indeed suffering from devolution.

I went with the 360 this past gen, and predictably, my first one crapped out, although it did last longer than most that crapped out (4 years). I bought a slim model to replace it, at that has worked out for me without a hitch. But, yes, it does blow my mind when I hear stories of gamers on their 4th, 5th, or more unit. If my slim crapped out too, i would have sold all the games and replaced them with PS3 versions. I simply wouldnt have had the patience to give them another shot.

[OverDrone]

Don't forget the Japanese 360 became the home for the modern shooting game this gen, with CAVE porting over almost all of their Danmakus from the arcade, even the obscure titles like Pink Sweets and Muchi Muchi Pork. The new players like Qute brought Eschatos and Ginga Force, 5pb had a go with Bullet Soul, G-Rev made Strania and ported Under Defeat, Milestone had Radirgy Noa Massive etc.

The vast majority of these titles never even appeared on PS3, with the exception of Mamurakun, Under Defeat and most recently Ketsui.

Thanks in part to Microsoft moneyhatting the smaller Japanese devs at the time, this genre was kept alive and continues to see releases - just this year we have received Ginga Force, Caladrius (shooter from the makers of Raiden) and the newest Dodonpachi game, Saidaiajou.

No one at the time thought that this would be the case, everyone just assumed that devs would jump to PS3 much like they did with PS2, but this was never to be.

The historical importance of these developments cannot be understated in my opinion. Here's a list of shooter releases on 360:

Mushihimesama HD
Mushihimesama Futari
DoDonpachi Daiojou Black Label Extra
Ketsui Extra
Death Smiles
Death Smiles IIX
Pink Sweets/Muchi Muchi Pork double pack
Espgaluda II
DoDonpachi Daifukatsu
DoDonpachi SaiDaiajou
Mamurakun is Cursed
Raiden IV
Raiden Fighters Aces
Caladrius
Eschatos
Ginga Force
Under Defeat HD
Akai Katana
Radirgy Noa Massive
Shooting Love 20XX
Shooting Love 2
those 2 Konami shooters that kinda suck

All of the above are on disc, not shitty downloads.

Not exactly a small selection, and if you wanted to see all of them, you need a J360, since most are region locked and not all of them have received localisations.

[Yharnamresident]

But getting a Japanese 360, would be harder than getting other Japanese consoles.

During the 8 year life span of the 360, they have only sold 1.8 million Japanese 360s.

Thats just, extremely poor.

[Soulis]

First console that people had to buy multiple times due to the worst build quality ever.

[OverDrone]

But getting a Japanese 360, would be harder than getting other Japanese consoles.

During the 8 year life span of the 360, they have only sold 1.8 million Japanese 360s.

Thats just, extremely poor.

Well obviously I couldn't just walk into my friendly neighborhood EB and pick one up if my current model broke, and I did pay quite a nasty amount on shipping when I did get mine originally, but considering most of the games I mentioned in my post are unavailable on other platforms except PCB then I think it was worth it.

Mine's just a dedicated shmup box, to me the console is synonymous with STG and has nothing to do with all the high budget rubbish it's made a name for itself with in the west.

[Da_Shocker]

Xbox360, the first console to prove that even though your hardware is an overheating piece of shit it will still sell millions.

Xbox360, the first console to prove that people have no problem buying a 2nd one after the first one dies, and then a third one and a fourth one.

(seriously you wouldn't believe how often I've read stories of people telling how they are on their 5th 360) (and they aren't even angry)

Xbox360, the first console to prove that humanity is indeed suffering from devolution.

To be fair the PSx and PS2 had a high failure rate too. When I did have a 360 and I got the RROD M$ replaced it and sent me a free month of XBL Gold.

[NeoVamp]

To be fair the PSx and PS2 had a high failure rate too. When I did have a 360 and I got the RROD M$ replaced it and sent me a free month of XBL Gold.

But that was just the laser lens, its not like the entire motherboard became liquid like the 360's.

Fuck Sony though, did you hear about how they are forcing Singstar up our European throats? they made it an app in the games section that you can't even remove.

360's that melt, PS3 that doesn't care what I want, Wii haz no online play, oh god what a horrible generation.

[JPEC83]

I'm surprised to see so many fanboyish comments here.

Most of what the 360 did first and well has been said but I'll add a little.

I didn't have the original Xbox but I opted for the 360 over the PS3 and though I have a PS3 now, I don't regret my original choice. I know the failure rate was bad and I appreciate it would put people off but Microsoft were pretty good about replacing them. I still own the original design but with HDMI (Japanese model) and I'd describe it as my "hub" console. Until Sony launched PS+ and Steam became big, the XBLA was simply the best game download service out there with a hell of a lot of quality titles (old and new). The control is up there for me with the best ever made (with the d-pad the glaring exception). You can reasonably state that the PlayStation Store is better but that is now, not then.

Did I mention that I don't even like Halo or COD?

[Melf]

Wait what!? That was the main thing for the Xbox but MS foolishly took the HD out of the 360 in those awful core units. Wait you're talking about HD gaming but I thought HDMI didn't become available until the Elite unit came out?

I had one of the white arcade units (the ones that came without an HDD) and it had HDMI output.

[EclecticGroove]

First console that people had to buy multiple times due to the worst build quality ever.

That honor goes to the original PSX for me. I've been through a lot of 360's, but only one of them was replaced due to it dying. The rest I all traded in for newer models (HDMI model, with original going to brother, then the elite, then the slim).
The only one to die on me was the elite, which I got used, so who knows what it went through before I got it, and that one was after a good couple years of use before the disk drive stopped working.

As for what the 360 did... it did a lot, most of it doe in some fashion before, but it kind of solidified a few things, at least in the mind of gamers. Online gaming for consoles especially. To that end, Live would be the biggest I think. It wasn't the first appearance of online gaming on consoles, nor was it even the first for Live itself, but it's absolutely where it became such a monster hit and money maker for MS.

[Devil N]

1) It brought HD into the mainstream. Not just HD gaming, but HD in general. When the 360 launched in 2005, HD was still very much a niche market, with very little content on offer and only available to those who were willing to spend big. The Xbox 360 gave the common folks a good reason to upgrade their TVs, which then triggered an avalanche of more HD content and cheaper HDTVs.

2) It was the first console to really get online console gaming right. The original Xbox Live was good but still mostly an experiment, while the PS2's attempts at online were abysmal. The Xbox 360 is where everything really came together and a high quality online service became something console gamers would expect.

3) It revitalized the indie gaming scene through Xbox Live Arcade. It's ironic that the indie gaming scene has now turned against Microsoft, because at the start of the current console generation they were the big indie darling, being the first console supplier to have a pedestal for indies to really get noticed by the mainstream gamer.

4?) It popularized the concept of Achievements/Trophies. Depending on your point of view, this may be a good thing or a bad thing.

It's easy to dismiss the historical value of the Xbox 360, because all of the things listed above are taken for granted by everyone now. But back in 2005 when the console launched these things were anything but self-evident. The Xbox 360 really did successfully pioneer these new concepts.

[GeckoYamori]

The biggest impact of the 360 was causing a software paradigm shift for the entire console industry. Western, mostly former-PC developers took over the mainstream charts and have pushed out the traditional Japanese devs to near irrelevance. This also caught Sony completely off guard, and their alien PS3 architecture was not an attractive choice for the new masters of the console charts.

[Bottino]

[QUOTE=JPEC83;606353]I'm surprised to see so many fanboyish comments here.

/QUOTE]

[kool kitty89]

Ah, Japanese 360 . . . I forgotten the significance there too:

the Xbox 360 is the first non-Japanese game console to take hold of a substantial chunk of market share in Japan . . . and the only one remotely close to being a stand-out critical and commercial success in that region.

[Da_Shocker]

Ah, Japanese 360 . . . I forgotten the significance there too:

the Xbox 360 is the first non-Japanese game console to take hold of a substantial chunk of market share in Japan . . . and the only one remotely close to being a stand-out critical and commercial success in that region.

Not sure where you got that info from but.....

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/...-fail-in-japan

Anyways MS should've purchased Square rather than Nokia. A Final Fantasy exclusively on the Xbox would've made things very interesting in Japan.