There’s a reason why every single console maker in the world today isn’t solely judged by its past systems but what they do with the present ones. Every single publisher, from Microsoft to Nintendo to Sony, has had at least one screwup that they can point to and say, “We should’ve done better with that system.” Today, we will talk about one such screwup released a decade ago by Microsoft: the Xbox One. This was the company’s third console, and many were curious how Microsoft would springboard after the successful runs, more or less, of their first two systems.
The answer would be that they didn’t. Not in a meaningful way, that is. We’ll start at the beginning. While the Xbox 360 wasn’t the most successful console of its generation, it did make a nice dent in the market, especially compared to the PS3, which was Sony’s “bad system” in various ways. However, when the Xbox One was announced, Microsoft did various things to basically shoot themselves in the foot, and it took them YEARS to recover from it.
For example, this was the first console to be “always online,” which is unpopular with gamers even today. Microsoft even blasted gamers who felt this was a “bad idea” and told them to ‘go back to the 360’ if they didn’t like it.
They were also desperate to piggyback off the Nintendo Wii’s motion controllers’ success, so they used their Xbox Kinect attachment with the Xbox One as part of a bundle that jacked up the price. The Kinect, if you recall, was a huge failure and another thing that Microsoft doesn’t like to talk about.
There were also DRM issues and bad branding that led many people to wonder why they needed this system.
As we noted, it took Microsoft a while to figure out that they screwed up, and so even with a good gaming lineup at times, especially at launch, the console suffered. It wasn’t until they did a relaunch of sorts via the Xbox One X that things turned around. Eventually, the console sold 58 million units. While that made them the second-place console of the generation, that was only because the Wii U was an unmitigated disaster.
The irony is that Microsoft didn’t really learn certain things from the Xbox One, and that’s why the Xbox Series X/S isn’t doing so hot, getting crushed by both the Sony PS5 and the Nintendo Switch.
