Machine Memories: Xbox 360

On 02/22/2023 at 01:50 PM by KnightDriver

I remember getting a 360 summer 2006 to get Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I was really amazed by the graphics. Also, the online experience was really ramped up from previous consoles. There was more online play, community stuff, access to movies and music, and digital only games. It was a great time to be a gamer.

360

However, my system crashed maybe a year later, and I got a new one with an extended warrantee; there were problems with the first gen consoles overheating. I went on to have to replace two other consoles over the next few years. Still, it was a new and exciting era of online functionality, and I wasn’t upset at all. I just wanted to play more and experience all that Xbox Live had to offer.

I could go into the 137 games I wrote down (and those were just the ones my friend and I played a lot), but it would a long, long blog. So, I’ll just mention the new series and developers I came to follow.

New series I became a fan of: Mass Effect, Overlord, Torchlight, Exit, Defense Grid, Condemned, Lego games, Minecraft, Saints Row, Bioshock, Borderlands, Call of Juarez, The Darkness, Crackdown, Earth Defense Force, Gears of War and Just Cause.

Developers I became a fan of: Double Fine (Stacking, Costume Quest), Ninjabee (Band of Bugs, Kingdom of Keflings, The Maw), Frontier Developments (Disneyland Adventures, Zoo Tycoon), Zen and Farsight Studios (pinball games), People Can Fly (Painkiller, Bulletstorm, Gears Judgment), Treyarch (COD3 and Black Ops), and Raven (Quake 4, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wolfenstein, Singularity).

So, I got into lots of new stuff in these years on the old Xbox 360 despite the red ring of death.

TV Time! Commericial.

Machocruz

02/22/2023 at 07:44 PM

Never interested me because of shoddy hardware quality and exclusives that weren't up my alley, but it was surely a force to be reckoned with in the market at the time.

KnightDriver

02/24/2023 at 10:20 AM

I'm largely a Xbox fan because my friend is, and we can play together that way. I enjoy the graphics better on Playstation.

SanAndreas

02/22/2023 at 09:58 PM

I got one of these for Virtua Fighter 5 Online, since the PS3 didn't have any comparable online fighting games (and was still very expensive). I also enjoyed Fallout 3 and Tales of Vesperia on 360. It almost made me overcome my general antipathy towards Microsoft products in general... until it crapped out with the E74 error, another defect that Microsoft tried to lie about until they were threatened with legal action. I switched to PS3 after that.

02/24/2023 at 10:25 AM

It's funny, because my friend and I are always bitching about Microsoft even though we mostly use their consoles.

Cary Woodham

02/23/2023 at 07:16 AM

When we did our podcast on top five favorite home console games, the 360 was on my list. Which is weird because I didn't own the Xbox consoles before or after it. The 360 just had a wide variety of games I wanted to play on it, and to me it was the first console that did the online thing right. Consoles today still imitate what the 360 started with that.

My only problem with the 360 was the dreaded 'red ring of death.' It happened to me twice. I have a rule with consoles and games and that's "three strikes and you're out." So any time I play a game that freezes up on my three times or more, I stop playing it. So it's a good thing the red ring only happened to me twice. Still probably too many times for that to happen, though.

02/24/2023 at 10:34 AM

Right, they did the online thing right. The hardware, not so much. Sony seems to get the hardware right. I always love the look and play of their games, but they arent' quite as engaging in their online offerings. Nintendo does their own thing, and is often backwards online, but I love their games and the smaller form factor of their consoles. Which all mean that. . .I WANT THEM ALL! Ha ha.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/25/2023 at 01:01 AM

I really should have applied that rule to Supermassive Games' "The Devil in Me" chapter of The Dark Pictures Anthology.

I guess I'll never see the end of the game, which is frustrating considering how close I got.

Casey Curran Staff Writer

02/25/2023 at 01:41 AM

Love this thing. Might be my favorite console. End was meh, but still was the better experience console so multiplats give it the edge over PS3 in my book while those early exclusives like Mass Effect, Halo 3, Gears, and Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts were fire. Not to mention how much fun every summer of arcade was.

02/27/2023 at 02:31 PM

Oh yeah, forgot about Summer of Arcade. That was cool.

PixlBit