The Mistake That Cost Xbox Everything 

Timing on this one was something... Thanks Phil

Man. Nothing will ever beat those midnight releases of Halo from back In the day.

We had Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3, Forza 2, Forza 3, Forza 4, Forza Horizon and Forza Horizon 2 and many third party exclusives all in the Xbox 360, tbh this clean competition from Phil Spencer is just lame

Whenever the Xbox Avatars when away i knew it was over. The heart and soul was gone.

I wish Microsoft looked back at the xbox 360 and built their strategy around the good aspects of the xbox 360, of which in return we gamers get to relive a new era of strong communities, great games, and just new memories to be happy about.

I miss the xbox360 days 😢 How can Xbox fumble the ball so much since then?

I just have no idea what Xbox even is anymore. Recently some of Xbox's founding members were interviewed and they lamented that Xbox has effectively been watered down into a nebulous "Microsoft Gaming." I have no clue where the games division is headed if even well-respected studios that ship acclaimed games aren't safe within the company. They have all the money in the world and they've just salted the earth for so many fans (and more importantly, studios). They've committed PR suicide and no doubt just exacerbated the long-running issue of multiplatform games skipping the Xbox because literally what is the point when it has the smallest install-base and porting costs are bound to be wasted? I hate it here. I feel like I'm shackled to this miserable platform because I've invested so much over well-over a decade and built my digital library here. It's not a bad platform, but it is increasingly irrelevant. How long before it's completely nonviable? All this money spent on acquisitions for this? Just to shutter them? Are they going to kill Machine Games when Indiana Jones fails to set the world on fire? Ninja Theory after Hellblade 2? What chance do studios like Double Fine have? Why work for or partner with Microsoft? Why buy an Xbox? Why continue owning one? Nothing makes sense anymore.

The face that the group-watch feature from Netflix never went beyond the 360 is so wild to me.

One of the biggest reasons Xbox was huge back in the day was because of Xbox Live. Xbox Live felt like THE place to play games and meet people to play games with. It was like one of the biggest meeting places online, it was like a huge social media service before social media was huge. COD felt like it was the biggest thing ever in 2010 and the place to play it on was Xbox 360. Xbox Live was such a legendary name in gaming but then Microsoft renamed Xbox Live to "Xbox Network" a couple of years ago which just sounds corporate and boring.

I think when Xbox first announced that they don't care about console sales numbers anymore - that was when it became clear that they are on their way out. How can a company sell a product, but then also claim they don't care if people buy it? It makes no sense. When Spencer then also started complaining about exclusives, and how they were bad for gamers, and how they should be able to play everthing on every device - well, that should have put up some massive red flags for everyone.

Biggest mistake was launching before the ps4 sony was planning to do the same stuff Microsoft did that everybody hated but backtracked after seeing the backlash Microsoft got

i never seen someone so accurately hone in on how all xbox’s core pillars got cut from under them. i didn’t realize how all these online games carried the 360 & the disparity that changed at the end of that generation.

At this point xbox might be like sega with the dreamcast

You forgot to mention that Microsoft just shut down for studios, and they say more studios will be shut down, so yeah, Microsoft has lost trust from the customers

The 360 was the Xbox's peak. And even with a great headstart, the PS3 overtook them in Sales. Then moving forward as computers being more versatile and more powerful GPUs came to market, with budget to flagship options being available PC is dominating. Then mobile devices entered and PCs trying to fit in that space with handhelds. I think I see why Xbox is trying to go the handheld route now with the massive success on the switch.

The timing is crazy. I just bought a used Halo 2 copy off of ebay and it literally has a mint unscratched xbox live 2 month free trial in it😭

Yep the moment the Kinect came out with the change of the 360 boot animation and entire design language (going flatter like Windows 8) is exactly where you can pinpoint the start of the downfall. At least imo. Just the start

I had a 360 back then and loved playing it. I built a small digital library along with the physical games that I had. I bought a series x last year and when I logged into my profile on it; I saw those digital 360 games show up. I was stoked. Sadly that’s the main reason I keep it today. Nostalgia. I mainly play ps, pc, or switch. I do miss the old days though.

I was the only friend played COD4 on PS3 after everyones 360 red ringed they all moved to Playstation ever since.

Excellent video mr Rash! Oh the gud ol days of H3, Reach, Blops and Gears 3. I actually used that Netflix Avatar feature once with a friend to watch Aliens.

Xbox 360 will forever be my favorite console

Even sports games like NBA Live, NBA2K and Madden and Fight Night had great social communities on the 360 that made the platform so special and a must in households.

Mistakes that cost Xbox heavily 1. Success of Kinect 2. Focusing on casual games in the late 360 era 3. Botched Xbox One launch 4. Lack of exclusive games 5. Milking the classic franchises 6. Losing the most important 8th generation to Sony, where people made their digital library 7. Not having a clear vision for the future and the 1st party studios 8. Launching games day 1 on PC 9. Game Pass

Stoked you showed a snippet of Assassins Creed brotherhood multiplayer. That was an absolute gem!

The 360 benefited from the PS3s failures PS really got its act together with the PS4s psn

Back in my day your Xbox avatar could watch Netflix with your friends avatars in a little theater

9:07 I love doing weird motion stuff

Xbox 360 all the way for me, I miss playing Halo Reach and Minecraft Xbox 360 edition with friends that I've played on Xbox Live with 12 years ago.

I love watching how Xbox destroyed itself videos. Some of my favorite content on RU-vid. Xbots still crying about the good ol 360 days lol. It’s been over for the past 10 plus years. Smh

It’s crazy how much Xbox dropped the ball. All they had to do was continue the Xbox 360 strategy. Getting rid of XBLA and trial games… Forcing Kinect/Motion Control at the totally wrong audience… Wanting to get rid of preowned games… Focusing on TV through your Xbox, especially as traditional broadcast TV was losing out streaming platforms…

Greed kills everything. I understand that sony is extremely Greedy too but I do believe that they put creativity and experience first and foremost. They will NOT put out anything that is less than great. Xbox on the other hand focuses on quantity for gamepass. Xbox buying up studios just to shut them down feels like the final nail in its journey.

Can i know what's the soundtrack in the background? It's starfield?

It´s curious that in Europe the PS3 was more popular. Back then I could only play Halo with my friends with Split screen at my house, all my friends played CoD on their Playstations and I was the odd one out. Xbox users were far and between, and it just wasn´t worth it to get Live to play online as a kid, and whenever I did, most people I matched in in Halo were American, with a casual Brit from time to time.

During the PS3/360 era i stuck with PS3. I took a gamble for a console and still prefer singleplayer games far more than online.

All of this is true and very well-observed. I’ve been a PlayStation gamer my whole life but I also got the original Xbox as a kid to play Halo 2 and Fable and got the Xbox 360 a few months after launch when I was 12. Online play was incredible on the first two Xbox consoles but Xbox also had some really compelling exclusives. I’ve already mentioned Fable and Halo, but I also really enjoyed Blinx, Gears, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Lost Odyssey, Castle Crashers, Ninja Gaiden II, Ninety Nine Nights, Project Gotham Racing, Dance Central, Viva Piñata, and so many others. I understand game development has gotten more expensive, but from around 2009 onward Sony made it really clear that they were just way more invested in making great franchises and they basically never took their foot off the gas until this generation

Microsoft got contempt with where they were at and didn’t think the PS3 would pick its feet back up. As a result, Sony took back the seat of the throne.

PS3 was still poppin for CoD back in the day too. I even had a little group of guys I played BO1 with on the PS3 back then. Also with no discord we were using in game chat.

Xbox died when the Kinect was revealed. Most ppl will say Xbox one but I remember when Kinect was unveiled and Peter Moore left they stopped making/acquiring a lot of exclusives and started relying on gears, halo, forza. People didn’t notice cause they were pretty contempt with 3rd party games and cod/bf. PS3 was ass the first 3 years. Once 2009 hit tho there was must have exclusives every other month and I was pretty jealous being an Xbox owner. Wii and 360 had incredible starts but couldn’t keep the momentum.

2/2 And ANY drop in rate of expected growth is considered failure based on seemingly false or skewed internal expectations. Not to mention that IPs arent given the respect the deserve because they are viewed as just BRANDS. Thus, the implosion ensues.

Its almost like keeping your best titles close at hand and being a little competitive spirited rather than sharing absolutely everything and trying to buy up everything makes you try harder and keep loyalty. Man.

The E3 Xbox One showcase destroyed the Xbox brand in 2013. It was marketed not as a game console and more as a entertainment home media device. On top of that during the E3 showing they said that the console would always require a internet connection to work and if you didn’t like that decision you should stay on xbox 360. On top of that Sony’s PS4 let you share game discs with whoever you wanted and Sony made fun of Xbox for this. To add to the destruction of the Xbox brand Xbox added voice assistance commands and this caused a ton of dystopian memes such as the infamous “Please Drink Verification Can” story. On top of that the Xbox One launched with a Kinect that didn’t have much games supporting it outside of Just Dance. The launches of Halo MCC and Gears of War 4 didn’t help reignite interest in the Xbox console and it was only until Xbox Gamepass came out that people started going back to Xbox, but by then the PS4 was the most popular console due to exclusive titles only available on PlayStation as well as brand deals with call of duty.

I think dropping those were part of a deal worked out when they were in court before trying to get the merger pushed. Of course they had to wait some time for things to happen but I think it's time to pay the piper

Microsoft mismanaged their IPs until they were seen as jokes, that's the biggest problem. Xbox live is nothing without the games to play on that same service.

hey great video, I agree with most of what you said. the future of xbox def looks a bit grim, really hoping they get it together for 2025 and beyond. It's still pretty wild to me how few "next gen" games we've received from both xbox and playstation.

They could still be great in the online space, but they've just let it waste away. You have things like the community feed and clubs, but they do nothing with them(even removing features). They've made the PC and Mobile apps bare bones and useless. They could literally have the gaming focused social media platform and they've just chosen to do nothing or make it worse over time.

Great video. They absolutely did squander their lead and it started with the Kinect focus on the 360. The other factor that I felt was huge was Microsoft didn’t invest in their own first party studios, until the end of the One generation. During the 360 era, they had such a lead and with halo, gears and cod on 360, they felt like the core fanbase was satisfied, they could focus on the Kinect. Meanwhile Sony had an army of first party studios that quietly kept pumping out games. Yes, they went with the “Move” but they still were releasing new franchises for their core. As interesting as it was to see Xbox lose the lead, it’s also equally fascinating to watch how Sony put as much effort into the ps3 as they did. While you’re 100 percent correct in that there was nothing as big as Halo 3 on the ps3, the multiplayer I ended up playing the most that gen, all the way up until they closed the servers was the last of us factions. Go figure. To me the 360 was one of the greatest consoles of all time. But when Microsoft fumbled out the gate with the Xbox one, they literally lacked the first party studios to help them claw back into the fight, like Sony did with the ps3. At one point they only had 5, with Rare being the only one not tied to a franchise.

7:42 WHAT GAME IS THAT?

Greaaat videooo! Im a pony but i loved my 360 during my teenage years! Gears, Halo, Portal 2... Great memories.

Can anyone tell me what game is on screen at 7:40?

Mann nothing goin to beat halo midnight release bit just imagine if gta 6 came out during that time when everything wasn’t download and Play mann it prolly would’ve been a different ball game entirely

When online blew up, that’s when things slowly started going down. Less attention for single player “the roots of gaming” and creative greed for things “mostly online mp”. I sort of despise online MP for the overall negative effect on gaming as a whole.

The fact that brand loyalty from the xbox 360, didn't help the xbox one is crazy

Luckily theres still small communities fighting to keep some of these old games alive! Even modsers are going and restoring the original halos multiplayers! Heres some old games for people to want to try out again and go from there: happy wars, blur, split second, titanfall 1 and 2, crysis, lost planet series, the multiplayer in dead space, alien vs predator, assassins creed black flag and the other original multiplayers, evolve etc. Just because its old, doesn't mean its truly dead! Look up discords, youtube videos, etc. To still see if your old games are still alive in 2024! It might suprise ya

Great video man. Possibly your best yet. Xbox somehow managed to survive the red ring of death fiasco because the console still offered experiences that couldn’t be had else where. The product was that good that people kept buying them despite the horrible quality control. That’s incredible. And then, Microsoft just kept making the wrong decision after wrong decision. Sad.

I had both 360 and PS3 during their prime and grew to favor the PlayStation but the 360 did have more features on Xbox Live that I wish the PS3 had but online playing felt exactly the same to me.

What’s worse is that the bought up hella studios just to dissolve them when they don’t make a bombastic live service . Mind you they don’t specialize in that kinda game lol Edit: I see you mention this at the end haha tuff 😂

I love Xbox and I hate seeing it die like this , I don’t think is going anywhere but it won’t be the same anymore 😔

Once upon a time PlayStation users could play online for free

Wild you really said blops one and blops 2 I’ve never heard anyone say that before in my life 😂

I heard someone suggest they lean into PC since Xboxes run off windows anyway. Just committ wholesale and make the next Xbox double as a PC. (So now Xbox got Steam going on it)

What happened early 2000s online play was soooooooooooo much better than today

When Microsoft pushed for DRM and sharing only applied to 10 people. Sony used Xbox's fuck up to win the console generation with PS4. I stick with multiple consoles but not Xbox. Since the 360 ended I never bought another Xbox.

Great video

I want to see the Xbox brand thrive again, but I am not seeing that under the leadership of Phil Spencer. Maybe, not releasing First Party games day 1 on PC and also not launching some games on PlayStation will help them out.

We used to be a proper country...

This might be a geographic thing, or economic thing, but my high school in Vegas, we all had PlayStation 3.

As Xbox grew, the tentacles of Microsoft wrapped around it. They got greedy and chased fads, treated their studios like crap, lost complete touch with their core audience and became this modern, corporate, soulless platform. When they made great games and sold lots of consoles they had a good thing going. Then they wanted more, and they lost almost everything. Now they can barely get enough people to buy their mediocre games, and they're not even pushing sales anyways, only Gamespass. They've lost their minds.

I completely agree, during the 7th gen Each company brought its flavor to the industry, Sony had the Japanese market on lock, along with their 1st party titles, and IPs like Yakuza were completely locked to the Sony ecosystem while Nintendo has been doing the same thing with fun games simple enough for kids and ~~Disney~~ Nintendo adults to play consistently. The Xbox was where everyone jumped into a party for some horde, firefight, or zombies. Then after the warm up you crushed a few noobs on CoD. Lets not forget, Xbox also had a lock on WRPGs outside of PC. Bethesda games ran like trash on PS3 and the Fable games are mostly well loved. Xbox's biggest issue today is they can't retain talent. You let Pete Heines or Shinji Makami leave right after aquiring them, whats the point of the purchase. Bungie has been a terrible play for Sony since their acquisition but at least Sony had the foresight to pay for rentention. Now with the layoffs, you let Tango go from your team but keep the failure that is 343i? What is The Initiative doing, why let them stay over tango? Don't even get me started on how The Coalition ruined my beloved Gears of War franchise. How does the team that gave me fucking Kate get to stay but you let Tango off. Xbox is going to have its Sega this generation and it makes me sad. Sony is already as arrogant as they were in the ps3 days and with no real competition it'll only get worse for console gamers.

Great timing

I wonder how many xbox silver membership accounts there are.

The Games of #3 is the Best Of Game out the Series from each

You are the first RU-vidr who acknowledges that the 360 was only hype in America. In Germany I didn’t know a single person with a 360, but like 10 with a ps3. In Europe everyone played cod on PlayStation

I would rather game online on pc and ps3 for free back then than blow money on the pay to play online scam microsoft created, its a shame how Playstation and nintendo fell to greed now hopefully pc never falls to it. Never begged my folks to get an xbox for halo since 1 and 2 came out for pc and was glad we never did when we heard of xbox live but xbox solidified my decision of staying away from them when they decided to yank halo from us pc players with halo 3 onward.

Can't even get xbox games anymore

The glory days.... when DEI was a hindrance on game development and they just cared about making good games.

Yeah, you’re not including me in your list Nintendo my primary my Xbox is my secondary

Couldn't you use a Xbox connect as a mic?

What killed Xbox was micronanaging first party studios to making stupid games for the kinnect then closing them orime example lionhead studios which had actual concept for fable 5 then was told ro make a free to play fable game for online. Phil and Xbox actually lost focus on making Quality first party titles and started closing studios then final nail was game pass which isnt sustainable. They started to build a solid collection of studios that can produce good games only to repeat what they did in the xbox one era micromanage then close the studio example tango games which oroduced some really good titles. Problem MS has is doesnt know how to run a video game division or direction it wants to go they need to let the studios time to produce good games and get rid of game pass go back to being a excuslives console maker if they dont Xbox will be a third part developer in 5 years.

Beside Nintendo hardware sales are down in general

Considering the own every giant AAA company they should stagger all the releases for their games like COD and Bethesda games for the PS5 and PC but a couple months. Also not release exclusives on PS5.

Xbox the antithesis of Woulda Coulda Shoulda

they tryna get they hands on this little package

Well made video arrash though you missed a huge xbox blunder. Me and several I've met wanted to leave xbox but didnt want to leave our libraries behind partially or our friends. We ended up getting the bones to switch to pc since we still get our first oarty titles and all xbox titles on the better platform.xbox's attempt to broaden horizens literally gave many consumers the means to just leave the ecosystem since we can still interact with it without ever needing to own an xbox in the future. Yeah building my first pc was costly. Upgrades havnt been too expensive unless you want top of the line parts. I game mostly in 1080p so ive been running fine with a pc that was buikt slightly stronger than a series x about 4 years ago. Only upgrade i may need to do in the next year is a gpu upgrade. Thats it.

I love my series x, I'm a casual gamer, prefer the eco system , controller and gamepass, Xbox has loads of games.

xbox used to be such a cultural icon

The entertainment media industry writ large has made the same miscalculations, and certainly Microsoft is a useful precedent. The upward trajectiry rates of any successful IP cannot be maintained . As in, the rate of growth vs a previous game in this case. 1/2

I’d argue pretty much all of Xbox main IPs are dead. They’ve basically killed them. Good luck selling another Gears of War, or Forza 9. I don’t even think they can pull Halo back. It’s obvious that ship has sailed.

Good video 👍

Yep - they've lost their way, lost most gamers, and they're not delivering the essential huge hitters. Now that they have Activision, the money people seem to have seen an on-ramp to selling 10 million plus copies of games on the PS5. Nothing from Xbox Studios seems to have sold anything approaching 10 million, or even 5 million since the 360 era, and they're not going to sell that many on console anytime soon - they've already fumbled, and don't have the vision to build anything unique in the console hardware space, that will bring gamers flocking. They could innovate with online play - there are things that could be done better, but it's not in Xbox to do that. They seem too preoccupied with trying to kill off physical games, and push their customers to the cloud. So - they're losing gamers. We don't trust them, and have voted with wallets.

Xbox 360 was truly innovative for its time. I'm glad i picked one up instead of a PS3 when it came out. But these days i wouldnt touch a console Playstation or Xbox as PC is my main system now. But if you are going to pick up a console in 2024 and beyond just get PS5. Even though i got PC im still gonna get a PS5 pro but thats only because i wanna play GTA 6 on launch

It's sad to see the current state of Xbox, but despite what the majority thinks or recommends, as a PC gamer that primarily plays on PC, I still went and bought the Series X last Christmas. So far I haven't regretted a single thing. I know people love to pull out the "exclusives card" all the time, but I couldn't really care the least since there's already around 20 games I've got on my playlist on that machine. Could I play those on a PC as well? Of course I could. But I really wanted a couch and TV machine and did not want to buy another PC for that. I wanted a hassle-free experience that just start up with a controller and no need to use a keyboard and mouse. I'm not in the core audience when it comes to Sony's exclusives. I know they're hits and have great success, but I'm just not one that's interested in Spiderman, Uncharted, The Last of Us, God of War or pretty much any game they're currently putting out. What kind of games am I into then? Shooters, recently Fallout games (Fallout 3 and New Vegas don't work on PS5 and Xbox has better backwards compatibility), older titles like for example I'm planning on playing the Mass Effect games, the Metro games, the Gears of War games, the Halo games and I've absolutely loved Forza Horizon 5. I wouldn't play that game on a PC... I just don't like plugging in a controller to the PC since I *HATE* swapping back and forth to my mouse and keyboard all the time (for example if I get a Steam message or something). It's just a disorienting experience for me. I also bought Age of Empires 2 and 4 on the Series X. I have them on my PC already, but I wanted to see how they work on a controller and I was pleasantly surprised. You can't be as compatitive that way of course but the controls work quite well if you ask me and playing AOE on a couch in a lying position wasn't something I'd think I'd ever get to see. Brilliant. And you couldn't do that on the PC version (it doesn't support controller unlike the Xbox version) so hooking up the PC to the TV wouldn't even cut it. Psychonauts 2 has also been nice so far. And I'm planning on playing Alan Wake Remastered and Control at some point. I know a ton of the games I mentioned are older titles but so am I. I haven't really played a ton of singleplayer games in the last decade since I've mostly played online competitive games on my PC so now there's literally hundreds of interesting singleplayer games out there that are multiplatform. So the "xbox has no games" argument is just thrown out of the window. What I lack is time to play lol. There's no shortage of games that interest me on that platform.

Yep Xbox downfall was the kinect during the 360 era, that and Sony getting their act together allow them to surpass Xbox in sales

Xbox had games. Back in the day we used to joke that Xbox didn't have any games. But in truth, and in hindsight the original Xbox had more exclusives than PS4 and 5 has combined. (Our standards of what is considered a good library has just lowered over the years it seems). Some of them were cross platform between Xbox and PC and others got ported to PC a year or two later. So in that regard they weren't "exclusives" in the same manner as Sony or Nintendo's consoles. But even then games that are considered PS2 exclusives like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Onimusha also found their way to Xbox and mgs2 even PC. The Xbox definatley didn't have as many exclsuives or even 3rd party support as PS2 though. But as you mention it had its own strengt, online play and proper internet support. But also its more powerfull hardware which made PC games that would simply not run on the PS2 accessible on console (Xbox). The Xbox 360 for a while had a decent lineup of exclsuives. Actually better than PS3's first years. And better 3rd party support. Me a PS2 fan actually switched to Xbox 360 during the 7th gen because it had the best running versions of 3rd party games and had more interesting exclusives (for the first years at least). Then during the 8th gen both Playstation and Xbox fell flat for me and I started focusing on retro consoles and stick to PC for modern games. Granted Xbox really sh*t their pants during that gen. As a PC gamer following from the sideline I have to give Sony/Playstation the win these last two gens for at least trying, and having some good games on offer for their system. Despite both system being lackluster compared to older gens.

Think you spoke to soon have you just seen the showcase wow 🔥 I think it was all bad timing for this gen you have to remember lockdown how can they make games in that time? I think they are just catching up but these next few years we are gonna see fireeee

if you played online on the ps3 you got made fun of? you’re literally just making shit up. i had a ps3 very early & it was looked at as luxury

You know what,since they announced they're shutting down some of their studios including the devs behind HI-FI Rush,One of my most favorite games on xbox, I've lost respect for Xbox As an Xbox gamer

Hellblade II is gonna flop.

I'm Not paying $120 a year Just to play online.

Aged like milk

I don’t buy Xbox for online gaming. I’m buying it to the missing games on my primary consul of Nintendo.