The Xbox One
Success is relative, of course, and to compare the shortcomings of the Xbox One to the Wii U is apples to oranges. However, in every console generation, Microsoft has remained the bridesmaid, never the bride — or Chick Hicks from Cars, if you’d prefer. He is appropriately green, after all.
The Xbox One in its various iterations has sold somewhere around 45 to 46 million units in its lifespan, good for 15th all-time among consoles. That sounds pretty sweet in a vacuum, but a quick look at the charts tells a different story. Sony storms towards the next console generation like an unstoppable juggernaut, having cleared 100 million PS4s sold, while the Nintendo Switch, released roughly three and a half years after the Xbox One, might have already claimed second place as of last month, by some estimates.
Even the Xbox 360 puts the current edition to shame, with almost 86 million units sold. In a short span of time, Microsoft went from Sony’s rival to Sony’s lesser cousin, and that’s not a situation anyone wants to be in.
Microsoft was positioned perfectly to wrest a significant market share from Sony after the success of the 360. Indeed, the primary reason Microsoft came third in that generation comes down to its inability to crack the Japanese market, a truth that has faced the Seattle-based company dating back to the original Xbox.
To the rest of the world, Microsoft was a contender. So they went into the Xbox One with all guns blazing. And funnily enough, there were more parallels to the Wii U’s issues than you might think.
Confusing branding was at the forefront once again. The One moniker, Don Mattrick told us upon its reveal, was intended to represent this console as an ‘all-in-one’ home entertainment system, but for many, it sounded like a step back. Wasn’t the first Xbox the Xbox One? How had we gone from a full 360 revolution down to a single digit? Where’d the other 359 go, Microsoft?
I don’t care where you put them… give them back!!
In all seriousness, damage control over something so straightforward as a console’s name is a hurdle that can be easily avoided, but the more concerning thing is that Microsoft seemed intent less on dissuading concerns, and more on telling us that we were simply in the wrong.
Per a 2013 CNET interview with Jeff Henshaw, “the thing you have to bear in mind, is that if you look at the original Xbox, the experiences have grown to become so dramatically rich and different. There’s no resemblance anymore between the two. You can’t confuse them in any way. So when people say “Xbox One,” it’s going to be reflective of this new generation of experiences. I really don’t think there’s going to be any confusion.”
This rhetoric was consistent, and read off like a laundry list of obtuse ideas that should have never gotten past the brainstorming stage. Playing a game, even one that had no online features, required a daily connection to Microsoft’s servers. The Kinect accessory was mandatory to use the console, and remained operating at all times. Physical games would be tied to your Xbox Live account, rendering trade-ins and lending discs between friends impossible.
Sony famously slam dunked that last notion in its second most amazing burn of all time. It trails only Steve Race’s legendary E3 ’95 declaration of “299”, the moment that crushed the Sega Saturn.
Step for step, every questionable thing that Microsoft announced, Sony was quick to distance its own console from. The Xbox One was designed to be a very specific thing for a very specific type of gamer, to the exclusion of everyone else, and it set the console behind the 8-ball from the get-go. Most of these ideas, of course, were hastily scrapped.
What has since plagued the console has been a lingering question of why you would buy the Xbox One instead of the PlayStation 4, and on the software front, there aren’t a lot of pluses. Each has a robust library, but once you remove multiplatform titles, the Xbox One is left comparatively threadbare. Sony’s exclusives include console shifters and game of the year contenders, while Microsoft’s offerings have been much less enticing, and in many cases, overwhelmingly disappointing.
It seems apparent that the Xbox One’s greatest crime is that it focused too greatly on what it could do, rather than what it should do, prioritizing its technological vision over its games. There have been some highlights, such as Cuphead, Gears 5, Forza Motorsport 7, or Sea of Thieves (which as you may recall, took some time to get going after a sluggish start).
Again, to deem the console a ‘failure’ depends on your definition, and the Xbox One can only be considered one when you pit it against the skyrocketing numbers of the PS4. There are triumphs, too — Microsoft’s Game Pass has long been considered superior to PlayStation Now, typically offering newer games, and the ability to cross-save between PC and Xbox One is an underrated function that opens up versatility that the other consoles lack.
Looking ahead, the pieces are in place to regain ground, as Microsoft has been acquiring studios en masse, loading up on ammunition to bolster their library and offer the major exclusives they so sorely need.
“We are shifting from growth and acquisitions to execution and delivery,” declared Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty.
For this generation however, it’s too little, too late. The Xbox One can delight with a magic trick on occasion, but across the road, Sony has got an entire show that dazzles routinely. It also has tigers.
