Xbox One: A Year in Review

 

For those of you who pay pretty close attention to the world of video games such as myself you simply cannot forget the terrible showing Microsoft had when they finally revealed everything about their newest console, the Xbox One. Even before the Xbox One was released the console was already being talked about, but definitely not much of anything good was said especially after what happened at E3 when Microsoft announced that the Xbox One would become the first console that uses Digital Rights Management or more commonly known as DRM which is a way for companies to digitally protect their games meaning that you would have to keep your console connected to the Internet in order to play your games and not to mention your game would only work on the first console that you play it on.

Don Mattrick, a guy who single handedly gave Microsoft and their Xbox One some of the worst PR that I have ever seen someone give flat out told someone in an interview that if they wanted to play a console offline then the Xbox 360 was the console for them. It’s like he was telling people that if you want to play your Xbox One offline then too bad! No gaming future for you! Get an Xbox 360. I’m sure you can imagine that Microsoft was pretty embarrassed by all of this and well you can probably also imagine what ended up happening to Mr. Mattrick as well.

 

The outrage that followed after E3 from the gaming community was incredible. Not being able to play games offline and more importantly taking away your right to do what you please with a game that you purchase meaning that you couldn’t even let your friends borrow the game or better yet, not even trade it in. No trade ins? Yeah, that means the end of the used video game market. So you’re probably wondering exactly how the Xbox One has stayed in the marked and how it has been in the past year since it’s release. Well let me tell you where the Xbox One came from and where it is now.

Before the console was released on November 22 2013 Microsoft decided to give back gamers their right to do with the games that they purchase by taking away the DRM requirements of the Xbox One. A lot of people in video game media were wondering how exactly Microsoft was going to even be able to compete against their rival Sony especially after how incredibly well of a showing Sony had at E3 that year. Most gamers lost a lot of respect for Microsoft simply because it seemed at the time that they wanted to control the way we play video games and not only that but what we do with the games we purchase and if your like me you don’t like it when someone tell you what to do with your money and the things you buy.

After the Xbox One was released it originally came out with the Kinect sensor which is part of the reason why the Xbox One started out at being $499 which was quite the ridiculous price considering rivals Sony and Nintendo released their consoles at a much more consumer friendly price. However this would change after Microsoft started seeing the sales numbers and how quickly Sony was selling their PlayStation 4. It took Microsoft seven months of poor sales figures before they finally decided to lower the price on June 9th of this year at $399 with no Kinect sensor to be more competitive with the price of the PlayStation 4.

 

 

So let’s talk about exclusives. Between the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One I definitely would have to say that although the exclusives have been few as far as AAA titles go the Xbox One has won the battle in the first year of this console war when it comes to exclusives. With games like Titanfall, a game that offers so many levels of online multiplayer fun, and my personal favorite Xbox One exclusive which is Sunset Overdrive a game created by Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games, that will have players jumping, grinding on rails and zip-lining all over Sunset City while trying to kill mass amounts of creatures all “OD”, you can’t go wrong really with either game.

As the Xbox One goes into it’s second year I am really looking forward to seeing what else Microsoft comes up with for their console. I simply love how there has been a new update just about every month since it’s release and the releases that the console has come out with have been pretty refreshing with the ability to now use achievement artwork as your console background theme it gives you a lot of different and unique backgrounds to choose from. You can now even show off some of those hard earned achievements in a showcase that displays when someone views your profile.

A year ago the future looked pretty bleak for the Xbox One, but now with incredible exclusives, an assortment of updates and a complete 180 that Microsoft has done it feels great to finally be able to get excited for the Xbox One and the future of the console looks to only get better from here.

Side Note: I personally would like to give a big THANK YOU to our partner over at Kingston for hooking me up with a brand new SSD drive for my laptop. I was without a laptop for almost a month and our editor, Justin Germino, was so kind to talk with Kingston about my situation and let them know I had a hard drive failure that they sent me out a brand new SSD drive to replace it with. Kingston, you guys absolutely ROCK!!!