After watching the Xbox conference yesterday, Xbox was disappointing and completely out of touch. We had a third party DLC as my highlight of the show. Xbox fans were praising it and I just didn’t understand.

There are a bunch of people who’ll read my posts about Xbox and then come to the conclusion I’m a Sony Pony. If you come to that conclusion you may have to go back and read my posts again.

While it is true that I hated Xbox, there’s one problem. That was over 20 years ago. When I first saw Xbox I thought it was dumb and “What kind of name is Xbox?” Tried the display in the store and the Duke felt awful, still does.

I had been loving the PS2 at the time. MOH: Frontline, Jak and Daxter, Jak II, Madden, NBA Live, NBA Street, FreakStyle, Wolfenstein and FIFA World Cup ’02. I played Max Payne, Dr Muto and The Getaway but the camera held them back big time. I was too scared to try Silent Hill, Resident Evil or the Fatal Frame games.

2002, a bunch of things happened that year. I heard my dad’s friend remarked how he had a PC and we should try Halo. I saw it a few times in Gamepro, I kept seeing Xbox commercials with Xbox Live in them and then I found what it was. I was like PS has online and then I saw how far behind Sony was in online gaming. If you were around this time, you’d know that you had to buy a broadband adapter for a wired connection. PS Online didn’t have many games and I dont think it had voice chat, you had to type at that point. There were these controllers you could use, that had an entire full size keyboard in the middle.

I will say with Xbox there’s someone that doesn’t get credit for helping Xbox establish its identity. Ubisoft played a big role in that, specifically with those Tom Clancy games. Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six had me a bit jealous. Microsoft had marketing rights and timed exclusivity. This was back when gaming commercials were cool and unique and not just cutscenes. Those Tom Clancy commercials were legendary.

By 2003, I had developed a great interest in Xbox. That holiday season, I began seeing those P Diddy “It’s Good to Play Together” commercials. They had me was stuck between what racing games I would like PGR2 or Midtown Madness 3. For only $150 at the time you could get an Xbox, Tetris Worlds and SW: Clone Wars.

That Christmas, I got it with PGR2 and Rainbow Six. I literally didn’t play PS2 ever again. So I never played the next two Jaks. Rainbow Six and PGR2 still make modern FPSs and racers look bad and the online was addictive. Rainbow Six maps Garage, Close Quarters, and Warehouse are some of the best of the series, not kidding.

2004 was one of the greatest years in gaming ever. For me I picked up Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow later and the original. Pandora being the most underrated of the trilogy and it did some things Chaos Theory didn’t. I tried Crimson Skies out and there really has never been a game like it since. Mech Assault was fun online. Grabbed by the Ghoulies had its moments. Halo 2 was my first Halo, and my god did it make an impression. I booted into the multiplayer with its innovative matchmaking and party system. Though I still do wish there was an optimatch for custom games. You also had the halfway expansion/full game, Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow was a full exclusive sequel/expansion, which some parts were good, most were unnecessary. Cool trailer too. I never got into Fable, heard good things but I’m good.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory headlined 2005 for me. Got it wasn’t disappointed. Pandora Tomorrow had better maps for the multiplayer. Conker’s Bad Fury was remade with multiplayer, though I believe the single player was censored. Coop and single player were great. Forza Motorsport had the best original tracks of the whole series and they introduced the custom livery creation idea and the ability to trade them online. I also didn’t play Jade Empire. Then this was the year of the next gen console.

The Xbox 360 debuted on MTV with a bang. Xbox Live was to have a greater emphasis and the games looked great. For the launch, they had this whole event in the old airplane hanger. You could come in and play up until the midnight launch, November 22nd. I ended up getting it for Xmas. It was the premium bundle with Call of Duty 2 and Madden. I later bought PGR3 and Perfect Dark Zero and it was dope. At the time it had the most powerful GPU out until summer ‘06.

Did I get the Red Ring? Oh yes, in a 2.5 year period, I had 5 360s die on me. Several of them, I tried doing the towel trick and it worked for a few hours or maybe a day and died again.

One of the best Xbox heads ever was Peter Moore. He went out and secured 3rd party exclusives. Gears of War, Alan Wake, Mass Effect. 2006 was the year all those games like Huxley, LA Noire, Getaway 3, Eight Days, GT5, Killzone, FF15 and Alan Wake, where they got announced and, either got canceled or didn’t come out til 5 years later. Alan Wake being the exception at 4.

At that same E3, Peter made an even bigger announcement. He lifted up his sleeve and showed a GTA IV tattooed on it. GTA IV will launch the same on Xbox and PS. Then it got even better, he then said the story DLCs would be timed exclusives for Xbox 360.

Gears of War, when I saw it at E3, didn’t blow my mind. However, that Mad World trailer was just awesome. That song perfectly embodies the state of Xbox today. Gears 1 and Halo 3 were the last Xbox games I can remember people at school were talking about. I got GoW a month later and that coop was legendary. GRAW also came out In ‘06, and it was good but the Ghost Recons have always felt off to me. Let’s not also forget Rainbow Six Vegas. People loved it, it was an ok game but I preferred the OG Xbox ones.

2007 rolled around and Xbox kept the momentum. You had PGR4 come out was a good game though,I wasn’t into bikes. Forza 2 came out and I was loving it and it had a reality show with it. Halo 3 was that year’s blockbuster, but before that there was a beta for it. This was when betas were rare and not glorified demos. To get access to it you had to buy Crackdown. Which was also a decent game, for me it needed refinement. In July is when Don Mattrick joined Xbox as its President of Interactive Entertainment. On top of this you had the launch of the Xbox Live Arcade, consisting of old 2D and 3D games from the 90s consoles and arcades. There were also some indies.

Fast forward to 2008, the games kept coming. Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Viva Piñata TIP, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Banjo Kazooie, the later being critically hated. Halo 3: ODST got delayed til 2009.

Let’s not forget for this entire generation. At this point Xbox was dominating. It was the primary development platform and where people went to play third party games.

So the things so called Xbox fans say today. They don’t know Xbox history. They’ll say that’s in the past and the industry has changed. It changed because fans aren’t fans no more. And real gamers let posers come in and be the loudest in the room, call themselves gamers. But there’s more to this story.

In Part 2: Thieves in the Night, I’m going to discuss the fork in the road that came next and the rest was history.

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