A Consideration of the Xbox 360 Platform

I'd like to waste a bit of my time (and yours) considering the Xbox 360 as a gaming platform. Oh, you know what to expect here--console war flamebait. After all, it's impossible to try and criticize any console these days without setting off a riot, or being dismissed for attempting to start a riot. Content and intent are irrelevant.

But I don't care: I'm here to vent.

I own a 360, and I have to say, I don't like it. Not one bit. And I'm not a recent convert, no no no, I've had the thing for years, and my opinion has soured with each passing month. The thing of it is, the 360 has a lot of potential to be a great gaming machine, but Microsoft has completely squandered most (if not all) of that potential.

I wont bore you with the litany of legitimate complaints about Microsoft's console--the microcurrency, hardware failure rates, costly peripherals, etc., etc.--like I said, I'm really only here vent. I'm not pushing an agenda or advocating one platform at the expense of another: I'm just whining. And what, in all of my verbose meanderings, am I whining about?

My 360 has no games. Not now, not in the future.

Content. That's it. Library-wise is where the 360 fails as a platform. There's simply too few top-tier games on the platform right now, and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to ever look forward to in the future. I don't like this. I've mentioned this before, and been insulted for it: apparently, people assume I somehow enjoy purchasing electronics and never using them. In 2011 I've spent more time cleaning dust of my 360 than playing games.

Why? Because I've got a PC. And a PS3. And when it comes to exclusive (legitimately exclusive) games, the 360 is getting less and less. In the begining, things were great. We were getting top-quality titles from a variety of genres--Ace Combat 6, Chromehounds, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, Halo Wars... but now, nothing.

Yes, the 360 has some decent shooters. Personally, that's not a genre I'm particularly fond of. And you know what, even if you ARE that kind of person, even if you adore every Halo game out there, you should STILL be irritated by the lack of variety. Where are the 360's new RPGs? I've seen nothing worthwhile since Fable III, and what a stinker that was. Where are the flight simulators worth looking at? The mech games? The strategy games? The adventure games? The platformer games?

I don't care who you are or what kind of games you like, if you own a 360 you ought to be disappointed at the line-up of future titles, and you ought to have been disappointed at that line up for the past long while. People need to calm down and realize that not every complaint is about perpetuating some juvenile "console war." That kind of hostile environment is detrimental to EVERY consumer. These complaints MUST be verbalized by gamers, or else we run the risk of the exact same thing happening with the next console generation.