Microsoft's Plan for Xbox One was Crazy

03 Mar, 2025

Several months ago on this blog, I wrote about Wii U, Nintendo’s poorly-selling successor to Wii. It was quite a long post, because not only do I have plenty of memories around that console, I can go on forever with my opinions on why it never took off. Today though, I am talking about a console that was not a flop like Wii U, yet was still hampered by a series of poor decisions: Xbox One.

I don’t actually own an Xbox One myself, but I have to admit, from the perspective of analyzing video games as a business, I find the console, and in particular its rollout in 2013, incredibly fascinating.

My fascination partially stems from the simple fact that, like with Wii U, I was still a teenager at the time of its reveal, and I was witnessing history in the making (wow, video games, the most important part of history). In 2005 I had no idea any new consoles were being announced; I was just a young kid. But in 2013, I was a slightly older kid, and I saw all the gaming news. Because I was online a lot. And I mean, even if there were better ways I could have spent that time, I still feel a fondness for those memories (wow, looking at computer screen… such great memories).

Xbox as a brand was in a strong position leading up to Xbox One. Xbox 360 had been a true hit product, selling 84 million units over its lifetime. With how untouchable PlayStation had looked in the console generations prior, it was surprising to see Microsoft turn the tables and put PlayStation 3 in third place for a few years (Wii being in first place). Eventually, PS3 caught up and ended up outselling Xbox 360 by 3 million units, of course, but still, it’s undeniable that Xbox was doing very well leading up to 2013, as fans awaited the “Xbox 720.”

The Xbox 720, which actually turned out to be called Xbox One, was announced, launched, and lived a good seven years before its successor released. In the end, it sold a total of 58 million units in total. Its main competitor PlayStation 4 sold 117 million. I mean, what happened?

The short answer is that the company seemingly lost touch with their audience at the worst possible time. The reveal of Xbox One created a PR disaster, and even after refocusing and improving the console, Microsoft was never able to build an especially strong library of exclusive games.

The deeper questions are why and how did they make these errors in the first place? I have some guesses.

The Death of Consoles?!

In the early 2010s, many business type people had apparently become concerned about the video game console market. After the launch of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii, smartphone gaming had entered the scene and become a huge money-maker. Publishers like EA were investing heavily in it. Because of this, some analysts weren’t sure if people would still want to shell out a few hundred bucks for a new video game console.

Of course, Sony and Microsoft weren’t going to scrap years of work that easily.

Sony was the first to make a move publicly to bring on the next console generation,¹ holding an event in February 2013 to talk about PS4. I was looking at some old articles on this and there was a quote from a PlayStation exec, who said, “We believe that PlayStation 4 represents a shift from thinking of a box or console.” I was going to say I have no idea what he meant by that, but then as I read some more, PlayStation did talk about cloud streaming games a bit, so maybe that’s what he had in mind. Still, most of the event was focused on PS4’s hardware capabilities and features. It was a next-gen gaming console that would have some pretty nice social features to share your gameplay with friends. It seems to me like Sony was aware of a potential decline in the console market, but was not overreacting to it.

Microsoft, on the other hand? “Oh, you say console gaming is on the way out, huh? Well, yes, this is a new Xbox, but you see, it’s actually a… super awesome multimedia device for your living room!!!”

Yes, on May 21, 2013, Microsoft held an event to reveal Xbox One, and they kicked off the show not by focusing on games, but by spending thirty minutes highlighting Xbox One’s many multimedia features. See, the reason it’s called Xbox One is because it’s an all-in-one home entertainment device? You got that? So you see, investors, we’re not just bringing out a video game console—it’s a box for your TV, and it does TV stuff!

Incidentally, this was also the Windows 8 era of Microsoft. (You know how on Windows you click Start to see a menu that will get you to all your applications? Yeah well what if we got rid of that and made Start into a mobile-like home screen? Yeah Desktop mode is in the corner there but do you really need that anymore? We got APPS in here, man! Your desktop computer should definitely be used just like an iPad! Matter of fact we aren’t even going to have a Start button in desktop mode. You gotta click the corner to get back to the Start screen for some reason, when we could have just kept the button and made it obvious! Maybe get a new touchscreen computer if you want any of this to make sense!) I guess the company was big on morphing products into shapes that don’t make sense simply because they’re concerned about industry trends.

Xbox One had an HDMI-In port to enable the TV signal from your cable box to pass through the console, integrating it seamlessly into the interface right alongside streaming apps. I always thought this was cool (keep in mind, I never left any angry comments about Xbox One in 2013). It is a little interesting to me that Xbox would make a feature for people who use traditional TV providers, which had been in a decline that would only steepen over the next decade, while on the games side they were trying to push towards the future and make a change to a totally online-account-based system (we’ll get to that in a moment).

Anyway, I don’t know what investors thought about the all-in-one entertainment machine, but the thing about any gaming press conference in the internet era is that most of the people watching are just gamers who want to know what future games to be hyped for. It’s like Microsoft totally forgot about them, or at least way overestimated how much tolerance they would have for talking about TV stuff.

So that was strike one in upsetting the gamers. Maybe someone at Microsoft was just really excited about the TV features and thought everyone in the world would be too, but to me the idea that they were overreacting to the “consoles in trouble” narrative and trying to make it obvious Xbox One was more than a console seems more plausible.

pls stop buying used games :( :(

The gamers had something much worse to be upset about, though, than just one bad press conference. It had to do with game ownership and Digital Rights Management (DRM).

For years, game publishers have been looking for ways to discourage players from buying games used. As customer, borrowing a game from a friend or buying a secondhand copy are obviously great ways to save money. As the publisher, this secretly makes you furious, because you know that if everyone who wanted to play your game bought it new, you’d make more money! You’d never say that publicly, but hey, at the end of the day, your goal is to make your profits go up.

With Xbox One, Microsoft apparently was ready to do publishers (and themselves) a solid and cripple the used games market. They had this plan: when you install an Xbox One disc, the license for it becomes tied to your account. Now you can play the game even without the disc! Wow! Also, the console has to connect to the internet to verify the license of course. As for trading or sharing games, well, that is a bit complicated—so you can set up a number of people to be part of your family and you can share your games with them, and for trading and reselling, you gotta go to an approved retailer—though not every game publisher will necessarily allow their games to be in this program—or you can transfer a game license one time to your Xbox friend, but they have to have been on your friends list for thirty days because make no mistake, you are not becoming an unapproved reseller, you scoundrel, you—

Xbox detailed these policies in full on Thursday, June 6, 2013, just a few days before E3. They surely knew people online were going to criticize them, but I imagine the thinking behind the play was to get the bad news out of the way ahead of E3, let people get their anger out online for a few days, and then on Monday, they could announce some games, and by then the anger would have cooled down enough that fans would be willing to say “I don’t like this DRM business but I suppose I’ll buy Xbox One because I need to play those games.”

I remember Xbox One had been an internet punching bag for weeks. People said it looked like a VCR. They compared the new Kinect to HAL. Microsoft annoyed gamers by talking about TV too much, and then on top of that, there’s this annoying DRM scheme?

Well actually, the sequence of events is a little more complicated: part of the reason the online criticism became such a massive firestorm was that rumors had been going around for a couple months that the new Xbox would be an “always online” console. These rumors were not addressed at the initial console reveal, but afterward, people asked Microsoft about them. They pretty much said, “Oh, you don’t have to always be online. You do gotta be online. But not always.” I don’t think that answer helped things much.

The detailed reveal of these policies in June clarified that, although the console didn’t technically need to be always online, it at least needed to go online after 24 hours or you wouldn’t be able to play any games, whether you have a disc or not.

Essentially, without the internet, an Xbox One disc would be absolutely useless. The files are on there, but you can’t get them!

Xbox exec Don Mattrick said in an infamous on-camera interview with Goeff Keighly that Xbox had a product for those with no Internet, and it was called Xbox 360.

I mean, years earlier Sony infamously suggested their fans would get a second job in order to buy the very expensive PlayStation 3. That’s a level of delusion that at least shows they really think their product is cool and everyone should buy it. But this dude is like, “Just don’t buy it if you don’t have Internet!” I’m being a little facetious here, of course—realistically, the people who had the ability to learn about Xbox One during E3 and complain about it online clearly must have had Internet, right? Xbox’s internal research must have shown that most of their customer-base was online, if they thought this was the way to go. But the thing is, you’re taking something that’s easy and simple—inserting a disc into your console—and making it into something worse, something more complicated. Of course people weren’t going to like that!

What’s crazy is, Microsoft could have taken notice of the criticism that was brewing with the early leaks and rumors and backed off in time for the proper reveal of the console. But perhaps they thought a bunch of online negativity wouldn’t hurt them that much. I mean let’s face it, a bunch of people memeing and hating online often tells you nothing about real-world sales. But what Microsoft perhaps forgot is that a console launch is the time to appeal to the hardcore fans. They’re the ones who are going to line up day one to get the new console. They’re the ones who will be spreading the word to others who don’t follow gaming news as closely about the new console. Their reaction matters. Instead of worrying about these fans, they cracked down on used games instead.

Microsoft had their main E3 press conference the morning of June 10, during which they showed a solid lineup of games (we’ll talk about those later). I don’t know if any game could make the online criticism disappear, but at least there was something actually positive for people to focus on finally. However, the price of the console was announced here: $499. Not horrible, but not great.

But that night, it was Sony’s turn. These guys must have been grinning evilly as they watched Microsoft’s PR disaster. Since the competition revealed their DRM plans a few days ahead of E3, that gave Sony plenty of time to prepare a response.

Let’s add a bit more context for PlayStation here. Remember how I mentioned a minute ago how Sony wanted you to get a second job to get PS3? PlayStation 2 had apparently made Sony Computer Entertainment pretty cocky, but of course because of that, they flew too close to the sun and made a console that was difficult for developers to learn and far too expensive for consumers, all in an attempt to create the ultimate video game and multimedia device. Not only did Xbox 360 launch a year before PS3, it was also significantly less expensive. Because of this, Xbox was, for the first time, able to gain a solid lead over PlayStation (though Wii outsold both of them once it launched). Sony then spent the next several years trying to crawl back into the public’s good graces, and thanks to price cuts, new ad campaigns, and a solid collection of original exclusive games, they were pretty successful. With that momentum behind them, it was now time for them to make their play in the next-gen console wars.

That night, PlayStation announced some PS4 games. It was a solid lineup, and I remember seeing people get excited for Kingdom Hearts III (Kingdom Hearts is an important childhood series for many in my age group). But then, Sony aimed their sights directly at Microsoft. They proudly announced that their console didn’t have any complicated DRM scheme, you didn’t have to connect to the internet to play disc games, and the console was $399, a hundred dollars cheaper than Xbox One!

Uh oh.

On top of all that, Sony released a quick little video on their YouTube. Just an impromptu demonstration of how sharing used games worked on PS4. It’s best that you watch it for yourself.

It’s brilliant in its simplicity!

Man, everyone was so thrilled about that messaging that they didn’t even care that Sony announced they were now charging for online play like Microsoft had been.

I really have to wonder, when Microsoft was putting together their crazy complicated DRM scheme, if they didn’t worry about fan backlash because they expected that Sony would be working with publishers on something similar. Or was the increased revenue resulting from pushing digital games so much simply that appealing to Microsoft, regardless of what Sony was thinking? Whatever the case, Sony observed the gaming community’s extremely negative reactions to what Microsoft was doing, and then they simply said, “Hey gamers, we at PlayStation are gonna not do that.”

Suddenly, seven years after Sony’s “Five-hundred-ninety-nine US dollars” debacle, they were now the people’s champion, the company that was all about makin’ games for gamers—none of this Kinect Microsoft Bing crap.

At this point, a lot of gamers who played on Xbox 360 but didn’t necessarily feel loyalty to the brand were thinking, “Well dang, PlayStation 4 is actually looking like a better option.” I’m sure a lot of those people had PS2s before they had 360s, after all.

The mood inside Microsoft could not have been too great. Eventually it must have dawned on leadership that cracking down on used games wasn’t going to increase profits if it meant barely anyone bought an Xbox One.

On June 19, Microsoft announced they were ditching the new DRM policy completely. Xbox fans must have breathed a heavy sigh of relief. But undoubtedly, many people had already made up their minds and turned their backs on Xbox One in favor of PlayStation 4.

The irony of Microsoft trying to make everything digital back in 2013 is that today, the majority of game sales are digital downloads. Microsoft was correct in believing that this shift would happen; they just tried to accelerate it in a terrible way.

I could easily get into the pros and cons of the move away from physical products (I still buy discs pretty often), but at the end of the day, unless your internet service is bad, digital game sales are always gonna win in convenience, so it’s no wonder they’ve become the norm. Practically zero PC games even release on disc anymore.

Microsoft should have learned from what happened with digital music in the 2000s that the way to keep customers spending their money is not by imposing a bunch of restrictions, but by offering a service that’s simply better than what people are currently using. People were willing to buy music on iTunes because it was just easy to do, and the songs were only $0.99. It probably made much more of a difference than all the anti-piracy stuff on CDs and legal action on filesharing services ever did. It’s when customers think you’re trying to make their lives more difficult that they get angry and and start sailing the high seas instead. And all the details of Xbox One’s DRM as initially announced just sounded like a big pain. Even if it probably would’ve worked fine for a lot of customers, it still sounded like an unnecessary burden and a big downgrade from Xbox 360. But when you let people have the choice? They’ll give you their money if you make it easy and appealing enough.

See, when Microsoft says “You need to go online to play any games including discs!” everyone hates it, but a few years later when they say, “With Xbox Game Pass, you can access all these games for the price of our monthly subscription!” everyone loves it. Because even though it’s a digital service, it’s actually offering something new and convenient, and if you use it a lot it’s honestly a good deal. So maybe Microsoft learned a few things from this whole debacle.

What’s the deal with Kinect 2.0

So far, if there’s a theme to what I’ve discussed with Xbox One, it’s this: Microsoft didn’t seem to be thinking of video game fans when rolling out this product. And unfortunately, that theme will continue, because now we’ve got to talk about Kinect.

Sometimes I kinda forget about Kinect when I think about Xbox One, and that’s because they started selling the console without it less than a year after the initial launch. The first major revision of the Xbox One hardware removed the Kinect port entirely.

But oh my goodness. Initially, they were pitching Kinect as a central, essential part of Xbox One. So essential that we gotta charge $499 for the console despite the PS4 costing less and actually turning out to perform better!²

Why was Microsoft so into this Kinect idea anyway?

Kinect began development way back in 2005. I assume that when Microsoft saw Nintendo making that Wii money, they said, “Hey, couldn’t this camera thing we’ve had in the works go up against the Wii? Let’s get serious about it.”

Kinect for Xbox 360 was a smashing sales success when it launched in 2010 behind a massive marketing campaign. After Wii fever had started to fade a bit, Kinect walked in to become the next toy for the world to get excited about. You can jump around in front of the TV to control a game, no controller involved! A pretty cool gimmick.

But here’s the thing… I saw Kinect at a few people’s houses shortly after that Christmas and got to play it for myself a bit. But months later, I didn’t know anyone still using their Kinect. The device was fine for controlling party games, but if you wanted more complexity, it was hard to get. That Milo demo was definitely fake. Capcom released a new Steel Battalion game by Fromsoftware in 2012 that heavily relied on Kinect and, well, according to the reviews, it didn’t really work (but isn’t that an interesting fact?)

No doubt the engineers at Microsoft believed that there was still untapped potential in the Kinect concept, so they got to work on creating an improved version. I want to say that they were not wrong about the potential, and I’m sure Kinect 2 can do stuff with motion-tracking the original Kinect couldn’t do, but the main thing I remember from Microsoft’s marketing for it is: “The Kinect can tell when you’re in the room and will listen to your voice commands!”

When it comes to trying to sell a video game console, it was an even worse gimmick than the Wii U GamePad, if we’re being real. It’s true that a lot of people seem to like using voice commands. About a year after Xbox One’s launch, Amazon’s Echo devices would begin to enter the market, for example. But we have to consider the price here. At $500, nobody was gonna buy an Xbox One just because you could talk to it to make it turn on your TV show or whatever. Nor was anyone going to pay that kind of money just to play Kinect Sports Rivals (which didn’t even make it on time for the console’s launch). No, $500 is a price point for gamers. But if the only use of Kinect for gamers is just fancy voice commands, then… who cares about Kinect???

I don’t really know why Microsoft briefly tried to make Kinect such a big thing for Xbox One. People feared that they just wanted to spy on us by having an always-on camera and microphone—I don’t know about that, but I can see why someone’s mind would go that direction when the product doesn’t seem to make much sense otherwise. I guess maybe Microsoft just felt like they needed a differentiating gimmick of some kind for the console? Or maybe they truly believed the voice commands and other features were the type of innovations that would change the home console market completely? Or perhaps it was the simple logic of: Kinect sold a lot. New Kinect will also sell a lot. (But it doesn’t really need to be mandatory with the system just for that).

Also, maybe Microsoft wanted us to use Bing more. Like, you were supposed to talk to your console and say “Xbox, Bing” if you wanted to search something.

Xbox voice commands live on as a means to help videogamedunkey succeed in Tears of the Kingdom. (Obviously this is a joke. Kinect was discontinued for good in 2017).

Where the games at?

Enough about all that nonsense Microsoft was throwing at us. It’s time to talk about the most important part of a video game console: the games.

When you think of Xbox One’s classic exclusive games, what comes to mind? Halo 5? Wait, a lot of people don’t really like that game. Sunset Overdrive? Oh right, there we go. What else? Uh. Gears of War 4. Gears 5. The Forza Horizon series. Yeah. Let’s go with those.

Oh and Titanfall was pretty good. How come we forget about that one? (It also got Xbox 360 and PC versions and was published by EA and its sequel which was also on PS4 actually had a real campaign so maybe those are all reasons why).

Even including Titanfall, or Quantum Break, or ReCore, the list here is just not that big. So what happened, exactly?

The Decline of Xbox 360

Ensuring a solid lineup of quality games is a process that takes years, and to understand where the problem began, we have to go back to the last few years of Xbox 360.

When getting into the game console market, Microsoft knew you needed to have a unique lineup of games to have a chance.

They bought Bungie, a Macintosh game studio who had been working on a game called Halo—which of course ended up being a smash hit that made the Xbox a must-buy for a lot of people. They bought Rare, the famed developers behind Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007, and Perfect Dark.

It was hard for anything to compete with PS2 in sheer variety, but I think the original Xbox had a pretty healthy and interesting library of exclusives.

I remember in the early days of Xbox 360, when I was barely aware of its existence at all, I saw a TV commercial or magazine ad or something for Viva Piñata, which is a 2006 game by Rare. I didn’t know what this game was, but it looked colorful and weird, and it was rated E, and it conflicted with the image I had in my mind of Xbox, which I sort of saw as a high-spec, grown-up piece of hardware. For that reason, the game stuck out to me in a good way, though I never played it or knew anyone who played it. In those days, it seemed like an Xbox game could be absolutely anything.

But something shifted in the next few years. It was like we as a society viewed Xbox as mostly being for shooters and maybe the occasional racing or sports game. Of course, my perception may be flawed because I was entering my teens during those years. Still though, when I look at lists of Xbox 360’s releases, it really seems like the variety of exclusives diminished significantly in the final years of the console’s life.

2010 was the last year the console had what I would consider to be an interesting lineup of exclusives: there was Alan Wake, Fable III, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Halo: Reach.

(I also just found out there was a sequel to that game Ninety-Nine Nights, which I only know about because it had some particularly funny English voice acting. But you gotta respect those times Xbox actually tried to appeal to the Japanese market. Konami published the sequel, however, so no points to Microsoft there).

Aat the end of 2010, Kinect launched. And Kinect games are interesting exclusives, technically, but most of them are more like novelties that are interesting for a couple play sessions but not anything beyond that.

Putting Kinect games aside, Microsoft’s lineup for the rest of Xbox 360 started to look very… safe. Another Gears of War, another Forza, another Halo. All sequels in franchises that got their start on Xbox years ago—and solid games, no doubt.

But consider what the competition was up to. Less than a year before the launch of PlayStation 4, Sony released a new game from developer Naughty Dog called The Last of Us. It was one of the most well-reviewed games of the whole generation, considered by many a masterpiece that pushed the video game medium forward.

Now, I understand games that get the whole industry buzzing on that level don’t come around every day. But after a rocky start to the PlayStation 3 generation, Sony had clearly gained some momentum with their game releases.

Meanwhile, by 2012, Microsoft seemed to be banking on a regular stream of sequels to proven franchises, the youngest of which launched in 2006,³ rather than looking for bold new IP.

But like I mentioned, Microsoft was technically making some new IP for Kinect. You had games like Kinect Adventures and even Kinect Sports which featured Xbox avatars in various minigames. No I swear the idea of custom avatars in a motion control sports game is a completely original idea ok?

I know we already talked about Kinect and how it was a factor in messing up Xbox One’s launch, but we gotta keep talking about it, because I think the peripheral might be to blame for the lack of fresh exclusive core titles, to some extent. Microsoft put a lot of attention into it, and it wouldn’t be surprising if that caused their focus on getting core titles out the door to suffer.

Microsoft was betting a lot of money on Kinect—much more than Sony ever seem to put on their PlayStation Move controllers—and in the short term, this investment paid off quite significantly, with 10 million units sold by March 2011. Of course, that was 10 million out of the 55 million Xbox 360s in total at the time, so where should Microsoft’s focus really have been?

I doubt that Microsoft truly expected all their core fans to get on the Kinect train, but they did seem to believe they could release enough games to satisfy those fans while keeping Kinect going. And they did a decent enough job of this for the rest of the 360’s life.

But I think there were also many players on 360 who got in because simply they needed to play Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 in 2007, and what were they gonna do, pay more money for a PS3 and not play Halo 3? Many of these players stuck around for the rest of the console generation. But here is perhaps where Microsoft misunderstood their audience and what it would take to keep them around.

I can see why Microsoft would assume, “Hey, give them a new Gears, a new Halo, and they’ll stick around.” This may work for their hardcore fans, but for everyone else, it’s not quite that easy. If you go years without releasing something that really grabs everyone’s attention, even if you’re releasing good, well-reviewed games, you’re going to fade into the background when a game like The Last of Us or Breath of the Wild comes out.

Third-party games sold incredibly well on Xbox 360, and I wonder if leadership started taking this fact for granted. They could kick their feet up knowing that every single year, alongside a handful of huge third-party hits, a new Call of Duty would invariably release and sell millions, often breaking its own records. It was easy money and good numbers for Microsoft.

Of course, Call of Duty is also on PlayStation. Now let’s just imagine for a moment there’s a group of players on Xbox 360 who don’t really play much else aside from CoD and wouldn’t really be missing out on anything if they ever saw a reason to switch to PlayStation. Well, good thing there will never be a reason to switch, huh?

For Launch: Next-Gen Games?

Jump ahead to Xbox One’s initial reveal where they talked about the TV stuff so much. Once they finally finished talking about TV, we got the first showcase of the next Call of Duty game, which was developed by Infinity Ward and subtitled Ghosts. And of course, it was super next-gen…. Well, not really, but obviously in marketing they wanted you to think it was.

For some reason there was a clip of a dev talking about “AI” for when you approach fish underwater and they move out of the way. Yet another thing for people online to mock. Now that I think about it, I don’t blame the dev for being proud of this feature, because as far as I remember, previous CoD campaigns didn’t have many incidental immersive elements like fish. It was probably fun to get to add something a little different. But did it showcase the power of Xbox One? Not at all.

Ultimately, Call of Duty: Ghosts was a rather unremarkable entry in the series, and it actually sold less than the previous year’s Black Ops 2 (which really is a much more interesting game). I played the campaign and had an enjoyable enough time, but I had no desire to ever go back to it. Ghosts was available on both the old and new generations of consoles, and as you’d expect, the graphics were better on the new. Those types of games are always great for hardcore fans who plan to upgrade to the new hardware no matter what, but neither Microsoft nor Sony were likely to get a lot of new or more casual customers to buy a new console solely with this game.

Obviously, Microsoft was not banking on a third-party multiplatform cross-gen game to singlehandedly sell gamers on their new console though! So what else did they have up their sleeve?

The biggest exclusive launch titles for Xbox One were Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, and Ryse: Son of Rome. Ryse obviously was notable as a new IP, but reviews found it passable at best, and a sequel never got made.

Microsoft also published a rail shooter called Crimson Dragon that could be controlled with Kinect, but reviewers didn’t seem to like it much. There were other downloadable titles Microsoft published as well, such as a new reboot of the fighting game Killer Instinct.

While I don’t see a standout killer app in this launch lineup, it’s a decent effort, and it honestly might be better than PS4’s launch lineup. Combine those with all the third-party games, and if you bought an Xbox One at launch, I think you had plenty of stuff to play. There just wasn’t a lot to sway people who were on the fence.

The gap in sales between PS4 and Xbox One by the end of 2013 was actually just a million units, with PS4 leading. Since I already told you the lifetime totals, obviously you know it wouldn’t stay anywhere near a close race for long, but for the moment, let’s just say it’s the end of 2013 and PS4 is ahead by a million! After all, launch window isn’t everything, and momentum can shift.

Stuff’s just not working out

In 2014, PlayStation had momentum, but as far as exclusive games go, they didn’t have a ton launching. There was Infamous Second Son, of course, as well as LittleBigPlanet 3. They also had a port of The Last of Us, which was a smart move considering how many people knew about the game but didn’t want to buy an old console. Still, there was room here for Microsoft to strike! Launch a Halo game or something!

Actually, Microsoft had already revealed they were working on a new Halo at E3 2013, which was not incredibly surprising. I didn’t sense a lot of hype for the title, but that was probably because of the fact it was E3 2013 and the backlash to Xbox One’s DRM policies was in full swing. But even aside from that, the Halo name really wasn’t on top of the world anymore. Halo 4 hadn’t reclaimed that crown. Still, it was something to look forward to.

Halo 5 was not ready in 2014, however. What they did have instead that year was Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a compilation of past Halo games. Easy slam dunk right there! Or at least it should have been. Instead, when it launched in November 2014, there were serious issues with online matchmaking, to the extent that Microsoft had to make a big apology to fans. OOF.

But fine, what else they got?

Let’s go back for a moment to E3 2014 (June). Microsoft has already made Kinect optional by this point. This could be a chance for them to finally start building a lot of positive momentum for Xbox One.

One of the biggest announcements at this show is of a new exclusive from Insomniac Games called Sunset Overdrive. That’s what I like to see! Not only is it a new IP, visually, it really stands out from the crowd.

They also announce Scalebound: an action-RPG from Platinum Games. What the heck?! That’s cool!!

Rise of the Tomb Raider, a sequel to Tomb Raider from 2013, is announced as an exclusive.

They’re doing a new version of an Xbox game called Phantom Dust, so that sounds interesting.

Also, Forza Horizon is getting a sequel. Nice.

Then we have Ori and the Blind Forest, a very cool 2D Metroidvania.

Finally, there’s Crackdown 3, and of course, a look at the next Halo, which is revealed, unsurprisingly, to be called Halo 5.

Wow, pretty great E3, Microsoft. Personally I gotta ask though—did you see that new Zelda?!!

Uhh anyway, that was a fun blast from the past, but let’s return to the present and see what became of these games.

*Scalebound: cancellation announced in 2017 *Phantom Dust: the project never really got off the ground *Crackdown 3: launched in 2019, has a 60 on Metacritic *Halo 5: launched in 2015 and reviewed fairly well overall, but is generally not regarded as highly as previous Halo games by fans, and Halo Infinite kind of just chucks out Halo 5’s story threads immediately in order to start fresh

This lineup wasn’t all a loss, of course. Sunset Overdrive launched the same year and was well-received. Insomniac went on to make Spider-Man and get bought by Sony, but I will always remember that game as one of Xbox One’s wins.

Rise of the Tomb Raider ended up being exclusive only temporarily, but that’s pretty much the norm with that sort of deal, so I wouldn’t hold that against them.

Forza Horizon 2 turned out well, and the series would get several more entries in the following years.

And of course Ori and the Blind Forest was good. Eventually it would get a Nintendo Switch version, but I don’t see that as a bad move.

Definitely Xbox had some good games here, but… Ok, I know what I am about to say sort of diminishes the hard work of hundreds of people and the marvel of technology and art that is any video game. But the success rate of this lineup is not great. Halo being decent, though not amazing, could be considered a kind of success for Microsoft, but not the type of success Xbox needed to potentially turn Xbox One around. And Crackdown 3 getting delayed so far into the future only to be considered mediocre by reviewers was an absolute disappointment.

Meanwhile, PS4 was starting to get some truly impressive and critically acclaimed exclusives with Bloodborne in 2015 and Uncharted 4 in 2016.

But hey, in 2016, Xbox One got Remedy’s new game Quantum Break (it released on PC as well), which reviewed pretty well—but once again, “pretty well” is not exactly the home run Xbox would like. ReCore was another 2016 console exclusive, and I like to see new IP, but reviews on the game were mixed. State of Decay 2 in 2018? Mixed reviews (but actually I just found out quite a lot of people were playing this game, and State of Decay 3 was announced a while back).

But on the bright side, you had Cuphead in 2017, which is a very good game. Now, true gamers will appreciate Cuphead. The stereotypical dudebro fanbase, though? I don’t know, man. Regardless, a good game is a good game.

You also got Rare’s multiplayer pirate game Sea of Thieves, which didn’t review very well at launch in 2018, but has been ongoing since then and is actually pretty popular.

There was another Dead Rising sequel in 2016, but guess what the reviews said? They said it was fine.

And of course, the studio which Microsoft established to continue the Gears of War series released Gears 4 in 2016 and 5 in 2019. Both of these games reviewed well, so I think we can chalk that up as a win.

I’m just saying though, Bloodborne has a 92 on Metacritic. Uncharted 4 a 93. Horizon Zero Dawn an 89. God of War a 94. Spider-Man an 87.

How is it that Sony was able to publish so many PS4-exclusive games scoring in the 90s and high 80s on Metacritic, while Forza Horizon and Ori are the only Xbox One console exclusives breaking 90?

Well for some people, the answer is simple: reviewers are all conspiring against Xbox on PlayStation’s behalf!! That’s the only explanation. It couldn’t be that Microsoft has management problems; the system is actually rigged!

Of course, Days Gone then gets a Metacritic score of 70. But that was only to throw us off the trail!

More likely than a reviewer conspiracy is simply that a lot of Microsoft’s game releases in this era just didn’t hit with audiences, while Sony’s (and we can throw Nintendo’s in here as well) did.

I haven’t even mentioned Fable Legends. It was going to be an online multiplayer game, but it was cancelled in March 2016 after an open beta had already begun. At that time, Lionhead Studios was also closed down.

With so many of these projects either “underperforming” or outright being cancelled, and a collection of old Halo games launching in a broken state, clearly something about Microsoft’s strategy for game development was not working. And what was it specifically that they were doing wrong? Well, specifically, I don’t know, but obviously, you gotta point the finger at Microsoft leadership. It’s normal to have a few misses, but when there’s a clear pattern of difficulties emerging over the years across multiple different studios, you can’t exactly blame that on bad luck. Maybe it was Microsoft’s company culture, maybe it was individual leaders who were simply ineffective, but either way, something had to change. And so, Microsoft started reorganizing their games division in 2017.

Quality had to be addressed, but so did quantity. Rare seemed a shadow of their formers selves, Bungie had spun off many years ago, and Microsoft let Lionhead die. They had bought Minecraft studio Mojang in 2014, and they were very hands-off with them—a good move for that particular game. But now Xbox needed to again bolster their roster of studios and get some solid exclusives out. And so, around 2018, Microsoft began acquiring some game studios. They bought Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, and Double Fine all by the end of 2019.

Did this acquisition spree help? Are these problems all fixed? Well as far as Xbox One goes, it was a little too late in the generation for the acquisition to change anything. It was more a move for the next generation—which started over four years ago, now that you mention it, but let’s not talk about that right now. This is about Xbox One, ok? And the real point here is that Xbox One’s output of first party games was bad enough that it eventually led to Microsoft owning Bethesda and Activision. Crazy.

Conclusion

If someone was to assume in summer 2013 that Xbox One was dead on arrival simply based on all the bad moves Microsoft had made recently, I would have to remind them that there’s a world outside of online comment sections. Most people who played video games probably didn’t even know about any DRM controversy. As much as the console was damaged by all the mistakes, it wasn’t enough to send it to an early grave.

Xbox as a brand never had as big of a worldwide foothold as PlayStation, but here in America and some other countries, it definitely got a decent slice of the market during the Xbox and Xbox 360 days. Because of that, plenty of Xbox Ones were sold to people who wanted to play a third-party game like Assassin's Creed, Madden, or Red Dead Redemption II, and chose Xbox simply because they had an Xbox in the past. People buying consoles aren’t necessarily making a pro and cons list—I mean, if they asked me for advice, I’d have told them they could play just about everything they want plus a lot of exclusives on PS4. But if someone is happy with the big third-party games, plus any Xbox exclusives they like, you can’t really blame them.

And of course, there are also the hardcore Xbox fans who are going to be loyal through thick and thin. Obviously they bought Xbox One.

So, Xbox One ended up selling 58 million, which, like I said, is a lot more than Wii U.

Microsoft kept improving the console. They developed backwards compatibility for dozens of 360 and original Xbox games. They created GamePass, which became one of their biggest selling points. The first major revision to Xbox One looked less VCR-like and even had a 4K Blu-Ray player, which PS4 never got. Later, they made an upgraded version called Xbox One X, which boosted the console’s power considerably and also just looked really nice. (The names sure ended up getting confusing though).

But the effects of Microsoft’s mistakes leading up to Xbox One could never fully be made up for. They took their customers for granted. TV features are a nice bonus, but they’re not what fans buy a console for. And their plan to make game discs useless without the internet was certainly not for the customers’ benefit. Plus… it was a $500 product, largely because Kinect was a mandatory part of it? And PS4 was slightly more powerful? No wonder they lost a lot of gamers.

On top of those mistakes, it was evident after a few years that the first-party games pipeline really wasn’t what it should’ve been. That was ultimately the deadliest mistake Microsoft made. They rolled back the DRM plans, they sold the console without the Kinect. Sure, those errors pushed a lot of people to PS4, but I still think that if Halo 5 or another game or two had gotten tons of people raving about it like the original Halo or Breath of the Wild, they could’ve closed the sales gap with PS4 a bit. They’d probably never catch up after that launch, but they could’ve made it more of a fight. But getting a solid pipeline of AAA games going from a weak one takes years.

So when it comes to the success Microsoft saw with Xbox 360, if only they had known this: Anyone can get it. The hard part is keeping it.

Also, 2013 Microsoft, you gotta learn from Wii U which launched like two months ago from your perspective—the “never really played a game before Wii Sports” audience does not return just because you make a new console with the Wii name, and they certainly aren’t going to pay $500 for a new Kinect. Maybe you just think you’re the new hotness and nobody cares about Wii. Nah, that’s not how it works. Neither of you are the new hotness anymore. They had their fun with Wii, they had their fun with Kinect. They don’t need to come back for some new and improved version of either. Beyond that, by building the console around a gimmick that doesn’t actually have as much potential as you thought it might, guess what? You drove the price of your console up too high needlessly! Oops! Well at least Microsoft was able to solve that problem. Nintendo was never gonna just drop the GamePad. Anyway, let’s talk more about Wii U now—hold on, someone just showed up to take away my keyboard