Tag Archives: Xbox Series X|S

Metal Gear Mania 2025 – Metal Gear Solid (Bonus)

I’d actually been tossing around the idea of a Metal Gear Solid series playthrough for quite a few years now. I came to love other series in the genre, like Splinter Cell and Hitman, and suspected I’d really enjoy these games as well. It also felt a little odd to have zero experience with such a highly influential series, and one that a few friends of mine absolutely loved as well. Having picked up the HD collection for the Xbox 360 at release, something like 15 years ago now, my only problem was that it omitted the first Metal Gear Solid. As followers of this blog are no doubt well aware, I’ve been a long time Xbox devotee and until relatively recently, didn’t own a single PlayStation console. It might sound silly, but not having a good way to start such a narrative heavy series from the beginning felt like a real barrier to entry.

So, what options did I have? Well, I could obviously buy an original PlayStation or maybe even luck out and find a fat PlayStation 2 with its highly sought after backwards compatibility, but I’d been downsizing my vintage console collection and didn’t really want to buy another old console, especially for a single game. Another possibility was emulation, but way back when I first started seriously considering a series playthrough my PC was pretty old and I worried about being able to emulate the game smoothly, the accuracy of the PlayStation emulators available at the time, and my lack of an actual PlayStation controller to play with. Another option was the PC port of the game, but it always sounded just a little compromised to me, though opinions on it did eventually change and I decided that would be my path forward.

A little later, I learned of the existence of the PlayStation Classic which I’d somehow totally missed. A cheap dedicated emulation machine that I could plug into a modern TV, complete with a couple of apparently good quality recreations of the original controllers? It even included Metal Gear Solid in its selection of out-of-the-box games! For a fleeting moment this seemed like an even better solution, but sadly, the more I read about the PSC and its heap of emulation issues, the more I talked myself out of the idea. On the plus side, this did lead me to learn that the PlayStation 3’s backwards compatibility was actually one of the better ways to play the original MGS. A PS3 also meant I could play an even more exclusive Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Solid 4. Sold!

“MGS on the PS3: Ready for action.”

I acquired an almost brand new PlayStation 3 Super Slim along with the original PlayStation versions of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, and the PS3 versions of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection and Metal Gear Solid 4. This also led me to embark on a fun little journey to build a library of many of the other most interesting PS3 exclusives I missed out on during the era, though that’s another story. Of course, as luck would have it, the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, which includes Metal Gear Solid, was announced shortly after this, and now Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, which includes Metal Gear Solid 4, is due to be released this year. Talk about winning…

Still, I thought it might be fun to give those two runner-up methods a shot to compare them to my time playing through the emulated game on my Xbox Series X via Master Collection Vol. 1.

Starting with the PlayStation 3, there are actually two distinct options. The digital PlayStation Store release (which is the version that came with the The Legacy Collection) was probably the most widely played of the two. Believe it or not, my used copy of the Legacy Collection actually came with an unused code which I was able to redeem for it. Yes, in 2026! The big advantage of this version is that, of course, it doesn’t need to load from disc which means much faster load times and none of the nostalgic noise of the disc spinning and the optical pickup unit moving around. Some claim it runs a bit better than the disc version, though whether this is simply due to the faster load times is unclear to me. I’ve also seen claims that it has some minor visual issues, but again, nothing I noticed. The disc version, on the other hand, is often claimed to be the more “authentic” experience of the two.

In the brief time I ran through the cargo dock and heliport areas, I didn’t notice any notable visual differences between these two versions. In fact, the only thing I noticed is that the disc version, by default, has no smoothing whatsoever, which makes the stereotypical PS1 jaggies and particularly the dithering look absolutely atrocious. While true to the image output back in the day, a CRT TV would have smoothed the entire picture over considerably. To remedy this, the PS3’s emulator does include a “Smoothing” filter you can turn on which really helps. The digital version, on the other hand, already seems to have some light smoothing effect enabled from the get go and enabling “Smoothing” ends up smoothing it even more than the disc version. This is especially noticeable when looking at the font whenever text is displayed – you almost can’t tell the font wasn’t originally so nice on the digital version.

In any case, I concluded that I would have been quite happy to have played through this way, only losing some of the relatively minor conveniences provided by the Master Collection Vol. 1 version. Plus, the added authenticity of playing with a DualShock pad isn’t insignificant.

“The PC version running in widescreen with no filtering. Mind the mess!”

I also wanted to try out the PC port. Watching this excellent video by Retro Renew, I more or less followed their recommendations for setting up the GOG version and the excellent MGS Launcher. This allowed me to run the game in higher resolution, in real widescreen, with fixed sound and lots of other useful options exposed, and with great controller support. I’m not sure if running this version or running DuckStation or some other emulator with all of the bells and whistles cranked up will get you closer to a modern experience, but in any case, this was surprisingly nice. The game looks great running on my system at 1440p, and while it could be my imagination or just my fondness for the hall effect sticks on my lovely 8bitdo controller, I’d swear the modded analog controller support feels even better than playing the game on my Series X. This PC version also brings some interesting out-of-the-box features included in this unique take on the “Integral” version of the game such as the ability to play entirely in third person and the ability to save anywhere, and without going through Mei Ling to boot. Of course, there are some downsides; namely Psycho Mantis’s fourth wall breaking antics being nerfed.

As with playing the original version on the PlayStation 3 as above, I really only played around in the beginning few areas, but if that was anything to go on, I think I would have been quite satisfied with playing through the game this way. I actually liked it so much I decided to leave it installed for next time I fancy a jaunt around Shadow Moses Island.

“The master collection version running in High Resolution mode.”

As mentioned in my main Metal Gear Solid post, the emulated version that is included in the Master Collection Vol. 1 does include some tweaks and neat features of its own. You don’t get save-states, but you do get the ability to manage your virtual memory cards, including adding dummy saves for other games for Psycho Mantis to taunt you with. You can add in image smoothing, a CRT scanline filter, and going the opposite direction, the ability to run the game at HD or 4k resolutions, which looks quite nice, though it does appear to apply some sort of automatic smoothing/filtering, which I know some people will hate. There’s also no option for true widescreen or even a non-linearly stretched widescreen, which is a big bummer. Of course, there are mods and fixes to address some of these limitations on the PC version of the collection. Overall, given its availability, the other included contents, and Konami’s shockingly decent post-release support, I think the Master Collection is probably the best option for most players.

I could go much deeper into this topic by installing DuckStation and/or acquiring a PlayStation Classic, but alas, I’m really itching to move on to Metal Gear Solid 2.

Metal Gear Mania 2025 – Metal Gear Solid

At long last we make it to the first game of the modern series, 1998’s highly influential Metal Gear Solid. From everything I’ve seen on the subject, Hideo Kojima’s plans for the game seemed to mostly revolve around adapting the series’ existing gameplay to a 3D engine. Given that few outside of Japan had ever played the game MGS shares most of its DNA with, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and that the results of this technical overhaul were quite impressive for the time, there’s little wonder why it’s an absolute classic to this day.

“Metal Gear Solid – Tactical Espionage Action!”

As for me, I sided with Nintendo in the 5th gen console war and the only exposure I had to PlayStation games was what I played at friends’ houses. Word about Metal Gear Solid must have caught up to me though, as I distinctly remember almost buying a copy to play with “Bleemcast!” on my Dreamcast a little later. It wasn’t until the release of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 in 2023 that I had a legitimate way to go back and play the first Metal Gear Solid on a console I actually owned. Yes, I’m sure a lot of people will be reading this thinking of all the other ways I could have played it before then, and I’ll be addressing all of that in a separate bonus post. In any case, for this playthrough I played that version, which is actually the original PlayStation version running in some kind of proprietary emulator, on my Xbox Series X. It’s fairly no-frills compared to what you can do with emulation on a PC, but alas, it’s definitely sufficient… plus, achievements! I’m running the game in the original 4:3 aspect ratio with both smoothing and the CRT screen filter enabled, which is an okay approximation of what the game looked like back in the day, and also why my screenshots look a little dark. Unbeknownst to me they added the ability to run the game upscaled in its final 3.0 patch, released after I started this playthrough. It looks quite good, though definitely a departure from the 1990s experience.

While comparing Metal Gear Solid to its predecessor will be a running theme here, from a presentation standpoint, it’s such a massive upgrade that it’s almost beyond comparison. Starting the game launches into a slick, fully voiced introductory cutscene depicting series protagonist Solid Snake being launched from a submarine while being briefed on the mission. It’s all very cinematic and absolutely brimming with flavor pulled straight from the best political espionage thrillers. If you want to get extra nerdy, you can launch a separate briefing menu from the title screen that goes much deeper into the context. Watching that, I found myself being a bit surprised by how impressed I was with the voice acting. Once I got into the game proper, I continued to be impressed with how fluid the animation, camera, and controls all felt. The music was also great, and a perfect moody fit for the cold lighting and even colder Alaskan setting. A great first impression for a game that is almost 30 years old. It stays consistently excellent as it goes along too – I found myself particularly sucked into the snowy outside areas. it’s definitely a vibe and quite immersive.

“Virtually hiding around a virtual corner from a virtual guard.”

The user interface and control scheme are both very familiar, with gear selection associated with the left trigger and weapons being accessed and equipped using the right, for example, though I realize a large part of that is due to the console ports of the first two games being retroactively influenced by the later MGS games. Regardless, I found it to be pretty easy to pick up. Despite being 3D, the game largely confines you to fixed overhead camera angles. While similar to its predecessors, this feels oddly restrictive since the camera is otherwise quite dynamic. It’s also a bit more zoomed in, sometimes annoyingly hindering your ability to see the items, enemies, and other obstacles around you. Two new features help with this, though: the ability to back up to and look around corners, which besides looking pretty damn cool, moves the camera down to a more typical third person perspective, and the addition of a dedicated button to look around in first person. You can’t really move or shoot in either mode, but in terms of getting your bearings, they work.

The stealth gameplay mechanics are all quite iterative of what we got in Metal Gear 2. Guards are a bit more intelligent, responding to more varied conditions, even bodies on the ground. On the other hand, recalling the first Metal Gear, their patrol paths and sight lines feel more predictable so it’s quite easy to sneak around or up behind them. I find that to be more fun, personally, though a less positive step back is the lack of the sometimes hilarious overabundance of hiding places to crawl into that most areas of MG2 had, making it a bit more challenging to run and hide or to quietly wait for guards to pass. Another mechanic that was nerfed a bit was that of my beloved cardboard box; guards are now much more likely to be suspicious of it, especially if it’s too close to their patrol route. Because of the much greater risk involved, I barely used it. Conversely, MGS’s mini-map has been upgraded to the “Soliton Radar” which shows the enemy cones of vision in addition to movement, making it vastly more useful for avoiding detection and planning your routes. The alert system is almost identical to MG2’s, but addressing one of the major gripes I had with that game, guards are way less annoying when triggered, appearing in smaller numbers and less often, and once you lose them, it feels like the alert phase ends and things get back to normal much more quickly.

“Huh? It’s just a box…”

One of the biggest departures from the first two games is that combat feels way less viable. While Snake’s repertoire of hand-to-hand moves is larger – you can now grab, throw, and choke enemies – I never developed anything resembling “accuracy” when lining up attacks. This is even more pronounced with shooting; I could always take out my targets, sure, but whether I could do so without setting off an alert was a total crapshoot. I’d rather avoid guards entirely than try to take one out given the high chance of failure. If I had been able to line up a perfect head shot and/or consistently knock out guards, this game would have played very differently. This is fine, and perhaps even intentional, but from playing more modern stealth action games, I couldn’t help but feel like I had a lack of tools at my disposal for handling the more routine encounters in a reasonably stealthy way.

Structurally, MGS is a lot more linear than the first two, more Metrovania styled games, with “gates” typically tied to plot progression. You still have a ton of cool items to collect but they’re not really used as overt “keys” into new areas. Instead, new gear usually provides you with more options for handling different scenarios, but aren’t necessarily required. There are still actual key cards, of course, but placement of areas that require them seems much more intentional. That’s not at all to say there is no backtracking in MGS; even if playing the critical path, you’ll be revisiting the armory multiple times, and there are at least two sections where backtracking was added as what feels like a blatant attempt to pad out the playtime. At one point Snake even complains about it, much to my amusement. Thankfully, Shadow Moses is a lot smaller than it feels so these sections aren’t as painful as they sound. As an aside, there has been a notable “quality of life” improvement with key cards in that you only keep one in your inventory now. I still wish it didn’t need to be manually equipped, but I’ll take what I can get!

“Trust me, Mei Ling, that doesn’t make you special.”

Gone are the characters you could talk to in-game for hints and background details, being almost entirely replaced by codec calls and cutscenes. Codec calls are a perfect evolution of MG2’s radio conversations; they’re lengthy and detailed, two-way, often involving multiple people, and most importantly, fully voiced. Just about every one of your contacts has something relevant to say at any time, and they are even context sensitive to some degree. The interface isn’t too different either, though I really love the character portraits by Yoji Shinkawa. MGS’s use of cutscenes actually feels pretty modern, existing mostly to set up a scene or show events outside of player control. Between being rendered seamlessly in-engine and their often creative camera work, they’re a key component to the cinematic quality I mentioned, which itself is definitely an important ingredient in MGS’s special sauce. They’re also mostly relatively quick; the series certainly hadn’t reached total insanity when it comes to long cutscenes yet, and with the exception of Nastasha’s preachy diatribes on nuclear weapons, even the longer codec calls feel pretty quick the first time around.

With that, let’s jump into our story re-cap. Expand the box below for a short but spoiler-filled synopsis of the game’s plot. When I say “short” this is by far the longest one of these I’ve ever written, and I left so much out too!

Story Synopsis - Spoilers!

2005. FOXHOUND takes over a secret nuclear weapons facility on Shadow Moses island, Alaska, demanding the US government give them $1 billion dollars and the remains of Big Boss or face a nuclear strike. Solid Snake is forced out of retirement to infiltrate the island and rescue two of the hostages being held there, DARPA Chief Donald Anderson and ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker, as well as assess the threat. Colonel Roy Campbell returns to lead the operation, revealing that he has a personal stake in that his niece Meryl Silverburgh is on-site. Once inside Solid Snake quickly locates the DARPA Chief who reports that FOXHOUND has seized a new model of the nuclear armed Metal Gear, codenamed REX, being covertly tested there, then suddenly dies of a heart attack. Moving deeper into the facility, Snake locates the ArmsTech President being held by FOXHOUND’s Revolver Ocelot. During a tense shootout in which Ocelot seems to have the advantage, a mysterious cyborg ninja appears, slicing off Ocelot’s hand, forcing him to withdrawl. Snake interrogates Baker who tells him to contact Meryl, as she has the PAL cards needed to disarm REX’s warheads, along with Dr. Hal “Otacon” Emmerich, REX’s designer. Baker then too suddenly dies. On his way to meet Otacon, Snake is ambushed by the cyborg ninja, leading to an intense close quarters fight. As the ninja retreats, Snake realizes that it is none other than his old FOXHOUND colleague Gray Fox, who he believed he had killed at Zanzibar Land. With Otacon providing directions to REX’s hanger, Snake and Meryl team up, but the pair soon find themselves under fire from FOXHOUND’s Sniper Wolf. Wolf hits Meryl multiple times, incapacitating her. Snake moves in only to be surrounded and knocked out. He awakens to find himself strapped to a table, face to face with Revolver Ocelot and the leader of FOXHOUND, Liquid Snake. Liquid confirms suspicions that he and Solid Snake are brothers and that they are the sons of Big Boss. Ocelot then brutally tortures Snake. Somehow holding out, Snake is taken to a cell where Octacon is able to help him escape. Upon reaching Metal Gear REX’s hanger, Snake overhears Ocelot and Liquid discussing their final preparation for their nuclear strike and Liquid’s plans to turn Shadow Moses into a new version of Outer Heaven. After the two depart, Snake attempts to deactivate REX’s weapons but is shocked to discover that FOXHOUND never had the means to activate REX’s warheads, and he has inadvertently done it for them. Snake runs to confront Liquid, who reveals that Snake’s handlers have been lying to him, and that he was actually sent to Shadow Moses to serve as a vector to spread a genetically engineered virus called FOXDIE, designed to kill specific people based on their DNA. The US government wanted to eliminate FOXHOUND and hide all evidence of their attempted takeover, while also acquiring Metal Gear REX for themselves. Liquid jumps into REX and targets Snake. Gray Fox appears, blocking the attack and disabling REX’s radar. Fox reveals that he is there for a final showdown with Snake, but Liquid catches Gray Fox off guard, killing him. Liquid then challenges Snake to a final fistfight atop the hulking Metal Gear, baiting him with Meryl, who he has tied up nearby. During the melee, Liquid tells Snake about “Les Enfants Terrible”, the cold war era project that birthed them in an attempt to create the ultimate super soldier from the legendary Big Boss’s DNA. Snake throws Liquid off of REX and frees Meryl. Racing out of the facility, the two are confronted by Liquid Snake yet again, though he suddenly dies from the effects of FOXDIE. Colonel Campbell vows to keep Snake’s survival secret, though it’s unclear how long it will be before he, like his brother, succumbs to the virus. In an epilogue, Revolver Ocelot calls the President of the United States, who is revealed to be a secret third clone of Big Boss, Solidus Snake.

Whew!

“Yeah, I know it. You must be a real threat in the Muk-Tuk eating contest.”

Compared to the previous games, the writing in Metal Gear Solid is on another level. Much more of a soap opera, there are so many twists and turns, double-crosses, surprise reveals, and weird references that I’d be surprised if most kids playing this in the 90s came anywhere close to fully understanding it. There is so much of this stuff that I’ve been hearing spoilers for this game for almost 30 years and was still surprised by some of the plot twists. There are the occasional clumsy exposition dumps and needless overexplanations, though they’re kind of endearing in a way. Likewise, the frequent insertion of references to real-world military technology, science, and politics comes across a little more like a geeky obsession than anything close to realistic, and yet, this is a fun video game about a dude who is practically a martini and an English accent away from being James Bond, so hey, it works for me. Speaking of, Snake’s penchant for hitting on every female he comes across is even worse than in MG2. There are some other slightly pervy moments too, like Meryl’s ass being a significant part of the plot, but I think it mostly keeps it together. The first Metal Gear had some hints of the quirky humor often associated with the series, but MG2 was quite a bit more buttoned up. With MGS, it’s out in full-force. Personally, I think this is all pretty amusing, somehow managing to strike the balance of injecting moments of silliness into an otherwise very serious story without throwing off the tone. Unsurprisingly, there is some stuff that just comes across as more cheesy than quirky, though. A lot of the dialog around the whole “love blooming on the battlefield” theme, for example, just didn’t land with me. It’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s knowingly a little dumb or legitimately a bit hamfisted in its execution, but really, I’m not sure it matters.

When it comes to a lack of realism, the game’s numerous bosses, which are now a much bigger part of the plot, are where we go from a semi-plausible espionage story with some questionable stuff about genetics and a bit of deep state conspiracy theory to complete nutso fantasy. I don’t remember FOXHOUND being some kind of rogues gallery of super-villains when Snake was a member of the unit, but then again, I guess we were never shown too much about them. Among our bosses we have a cyborg ninja, a mustache twirling Russian gunslinger, a telepathic psychokinetic flying fetishist, a hulking Inuit shaman who wields a massive Vulcan cannon and has some kind of a magical connection to ravens, a master sniper femme fatale who rocks the cleavage even when laying prone in snow, and of course, the series namesake, a badass mech “like one of my Japanese animes!” A huge positive for having this weird cast of characters is the varied mechanics around each one. Everyone has heard of Psycho Mantis and his fourth wall shattering attempts to mess with the player, but practically every boss fight in the game is unique and memorable. Even the Hind D fight (yes, another one…) was really cool, blowing away those in earlier games. Speaking of fourth wall breaks, yeah, MGS has those in full-force too. They’re everywhere, not just with Psycho Mantis; you’ll have some of your crew telling you what buttons to hit on your controller, friends and enemies alike discussing your saving habits, weird rumble shenanigans, etc. It’s fun!

“Another Metal Gear game, another Hind D fight…”

I played the game on “easy” difficulty after learning that it was the normal difficulty in the original Japanese release, and I definitely think it was a bit easier than the earlier games. I didn’t use a map at for this playthrough and only glanced at a walkthrough from time to time to get my bearings when it had been a long time between play sessions. That said, you’ll need to do a lot of exploring if you want to find every item and have a good amount of supplies, and as mentioned, anything besides a strategy of avoiding guards is going to be challenging. One tip I’ll impart to anyone planning on playing is to not be an idiot like me and use your damn grenades! Stun and especially chaff grenades are kind of an easy button in many situations. Despite the variety of mechanics, none of the boss fights are that obtuse either, and a quick codec call during a fight will often tell you exactly what you need to know. That doesn’t mean there aren’t still some really frustrating moments. For example, my first attempt or two at counter-sniping Sniper Wolf was aggravating as she kept hitting me, interrupting my aim before I could get a bead on her, and I absolutely hated the final jeep sequence where it seemed almost impossible to hit Liquid. Also, my checkpoint before the Ocelot fight had me low on both rations and ammo, which made it incredibly challenging. Speaking of, saving in MGS is another case of a positive iteration over what MG2 did. This time we have modern checkpoints which you can usually resume from any time you die. However, you need to use your codec to actually save your game between sessions, though its pretty quick if you can resist chatting with Mei Ling. As an added bonus, there’s also a cool “mission logs” feature that dynamically describes the previous events from your playthrough every time you load a save game from the main menu. I love this kind of thing, though as I heavily leaned on my Xbox’s “Quick Resume”’ feature, loading a save was a rarity for me.

“Tap for your life! Err, well, Meryl’s life…”

There’s so much more I could go into about the game, though the most important thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the unusual level of detail here. MGS is full of little one-off mechanics that don’t really feel necessary, seemingly just because Kojima thought they were cool. There’s also a ton of easily missed codec conversations, weird interactions, and secrets sprinkled throughout. Toss that in with reasonably open gameplay in which almost every scenario has multiple solutions and this leads to some unique emergent, or at the very least highly memorable, moments. This all goes to make the game feel deeper, letting players’ minds run wild imagining the possibilities, which is surely an important factor in why MGS resonated with so many people.

Wrapping up, I think if I hadn’t just played Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake I’d have a lot more to say about the gameplay and systems of Metal Gear Solid, as frankly I’m a bit surprised by how similar the games are in so many respects. Yet, I’m glad I did given how much MGS references it, and I definitely think MGS is the better game, having improved just about everything, and upping the ante on the presentation to the point that it’s easily one of the standout games of its generation. I’m absolutely positive that if I’d owned a PlayStation and played the game back in the day, I would have loved it, and I’m quite happy to have finally experienced it. It’s a damn good thing too, as I still have a lot of Metal Gear games to get through… 😅

“I suspect this isn’t the last time we’ll hear about that place.”

I should quickly mention a couple of other related releases. Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions is something of a standalone expansion that greatly expands on the VR training missions that served as an optional tutorial in the main game. While I’m sure I would have tried to complete all 300 of these back in the day, a handful of more interesting missions aside, they’re mostly a test of the player’s mastery of the mechanics, and the mechanics, particularly the combat, weren’t really my favorite part of MGS. Once I got to some slightly more challenging missions, I found them more frustrating than fun and made the hard call to bail. I’m still tempted to go back and finish them, honestly. The other would be Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, which is the 2004 remake of MGS for the GameCube. That game will be getting its own article when we get to it.

By release date, Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color (AKA Metal Gear: Ghost Babel) should be next, but considering it is going to be included in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, I’ve decided to wait and play that version. Barring any delays, it should be released by the time I make it through my next game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Xbox – Past/Present/Future

I rarely get on my soapbox and post rants on here but all of the news around Xbox has been inspiring me to want to write something for a while now. Every time the feeling subsides without me typing anything up, yet another piece of news drops that starts the process all over again. So, here I am, finally putting pen to paper, as it were.

Xbox: The Good Times

Instead of jumping right into all of the (mostly negative) events around Xbox lately, I figured I’d give a little background on how I became an Xbox fan, and what that journey has looked like through the years.

“I actually never had a ‘Duke’ of my own. Viva la Controller S!”

In something of a redux of me using one of my first paychecks to bring home a shiny new Nintendo 64 and a couple of games in the summer of 1997, my brother came home from a shift at his new job in, I’d guess, 2002 with a new Xbox and a couple of games. Being fairly checked out of gaming at the time, I don’t remember hearing too much about the Xbox or any of its upcoming games. I’m sure it didn’t help that, despite continuing to begrudgingly run Windows as my primary OS, I didn’t consider myself to be any great fan of Microsoft; I probably dismissed a lot of these rumors with a casual roll of the eyes. Not unlike the inspiration behind my N64 purchase, my brother had first tried an Xbox at a friend’s house and was blown away. I, on the other hand, remained skeptical.

One thing that hopefully isn’t too evident is that I’m often a bit of a skeptic when it comes to new things, especially technology and popular trends. Popular technology trends? Right out! I try to be open-minded and I’m certainly no Luddite, but I think “cautiously skeptical” would be the best way to describe my mindset. When my brother fired up Halo: Combat Evolved, I was both impressed and also a little judgemental, knowing how much the FPS genre had progressed in recent years on the PC. But, to steal a line from my Halo Fest post about Halo: CE, “I was quickly won over by its unique aesthetic, mysterious science fiction storyline, slick, polished execution, and almost perfect early implementation of dual analog stick FPS controls.” Of course, all of the good times playing split screen Slayer with my family and friends didn’t hurt either.

At around the same time I’d built my first new PC in years and dove back into PC gaming, particularly online, with a vengeance. After months of being absolutely glued to my monitor for hours every evening, I decided it might be nice to take some breaks away from my computer, as well as focus on some single-player games for a change. I knew from my brother’s Xbox that I liked the hardware, and never being a massive fan of JRPGs or fighting games, Xbox’s more western aligned library spoke to me a bit more than PlayStation’s. When it did come to Japanese games, however, some of my favorites were those standouts from my short time as a Sega Dreamcast owner, and as most fans of either console are well aware, Sega went hard on supporting the Xbox early on, releasing superior ports as well as sequels exclusively on the Xbox. I was particularly stoked to play Jet Set Radio Future (still an all-timer for me!) and to finally play Shenmue II.

During this time, I noticed that I had developed an unfortunate habit of buying every new game that caught my eye, playing it for a few hours, and then never playing it again whether I liked it or not. While I suspect quite a lot of gamers play this way, at some point I realized I wasn’t really getting my money out of these purchases, and I vowed to start beating every game I played. This intentional shift in my behavior around single player games is still something I do to this day – usually if I play a game, I fully intend on seeing it through. Maybe not 100%ing it, but at least completing the main single player campaign. One big downside is that I play a lot less games as a result, and by the Xbox 360 era I still had a huge library of original Xbox games I was slowly working my way through. Feeling left behind and determined to get an Xbox 360 “soon” I made a concerted effort to finish playing through the rest of my games, which was especially hard since my library kept growing. At some point I had to draw a line in the sand, or I’d never move on. Despite this being a bit of a grind, I have fond memories of this time.

When I finally joined the 7th console generation in 2007, I’d developed a similar habit of stocking up on every game that interested me, although by then it had shifted to the more frugal approach of buying used copies of games from GameStop, usually taking advantage of their sporadic “buy 2 get 1 free” sales. To this day, my collection of physical Xbox 360 games is absolutely massive and contains quite a few games I never got around to playing despite having every intention to. Regardless, those first few years of owning an Xbox 360 were great, with some of my favorite games at the time being released back to back, and having a lot of fun playing multiplayer, both online and offline, with a large group of local friends. While this blog was born around that time, it was just a year or two later, so unfortunately a lot of those games were not covered here.

“It’s a thing of beauty, although I rock the Slim model these days…”

By the time the 7th generation finally started to wind down, I’d decided to reduce my gaming footprint down to only a single machine going forward, and it… wasn’t an Xbox. Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t regretted my time with either the Xbox or the Xbox 360, but if I could only have one machine, it had to be a PC. Not only could it play most everything a console could play that wasn’t an exclusive but it could do so, so much more, and gaming is only one of many hobbies I have based around computers. Plus, as mentioned, I still had plenty of great Xbox 360 games to work my way through. On top of that, I had to begrudgingly admit that if I were to get a console, the PlayStation 4 was looking more like what I wanted – I didn’t care about the Kinect and while the Xbox One’s media integration was neat, it wasn’t what I was there for. Meanwhile the PS4 was much more focused on playing games and playing them well, and Sony had been building an impressive staple of exclusives over the years to boot.

I’ve told this story here before, but those notions all fell through in spectacular fashion in 2016 when I went out one Sunday afternoon to stop by work for just a couple of hours, only to return home to discover that my house had been broken into. One of the (thankfully) relatively small selection of things the burglars made off with was my Xbox 360. Because of my renter’s insurance company’s generous replacement program, not only did I get paid out for the depreciated value of everything I lost, but they’d also pay the full dollar amount to replace certain items. With the Xbox 360 no longer for sale, I got myself an Xbox One S for free. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

With both my partner and I having already invested so much in Xbox, it only made sense for us to continue down that path, especially given Microsoft’s continued treatment of backwards compatibility as a valued part of its ecosystem. While I never upgraded to the impressive Xbox One X, when the Xbox Series came out, I wasted no time upgrading to a Series X. Since then, I’ve only continued to do more and more of my game hoarding with Xbox, although pretty much exclusively digitally. Not unlike Steam, the Xbox Store has had regular, generous sales multiple times a year, making it all too tempting to load up on anything I’m even vaguely interested in. Despite the lack of many exclusives that really excite me, I’ve really enjoyed my time with the Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, and I still do.

But things have gotten a little weird…

Xbox: The Not So Good Times

While the Xbox 360 arguably won the 7th generation with superior online features and only a few notable missteps (the whole “red ring” fiasco chief amongst them) compared to Sony’s slew of facepalming blunders, it started off the next generation quite poorly indeed. As mentioned, Microsoft seemed to be marketing the Xbox One as more of a multimedia machine than a gaming console, and you can’t downplay how much damage the whole always-on DRM fiasco did to their reputation with “core” gamers. Whether or not rumors about Sony planning to follow suit and changing their minds last minute were true, you can’t deny that Sony played that whole thing out to their advantage. Microsoft course-corrected, and a lot of people loved the Xbox One Slim and the later Xbox One X as much more gaming focused machines, but the damage was done and the silliness around all of this (“we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity; it’s called Xbox 360″ – Don Mattrick) lives in gaming culture infamy.

The PS4 was also a lot more powerful than the Xbox One which only reinforced the notion that the Xbox was no longer the best option for “core” gamers. This flip-flopped with the later releases of the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X, but the damage was done. While a bit closer together, the Xbox Series X is also more powerful than the PlayStation 5, but the release of the Xbox Series S as a less expensive, lower spec model which Microsoft required studios to support is often blamed for the lack of more impressive technological advancement in the current generation. While this is debatable, if nothing else, there are some specific examples where this clearly impacted availability on Xbox, with the delayed release of Baldur’s Gate 3 being a notable one from recent years.

“You know, I still really like the look of the One S!”

Then we have the matter of Xbox exclusives. While this has always been an element of every console war debate, it truly became an issue for Xbox with the Xbox One and has only gotten worse. Xbox’s exclusives are few and far between, and very few of them have had the appeal of those associated with the PlayStation brand. That’s not to say there are no good exclusives, but a 1:1 comparison isn’t all that favorable. To make matters worse, Xbox started making more and more of their first party games available on PC. While I personally think this is a great thing, it is almost always used as a negative against Xbox in such debates – these titles are no longer platform exclusives, but console exclusives. Since a lot of gamers either own gaming PCs and consoles, or game on PC exclusively, it’s hard to deny that the wider availability of these games means there’s less reason to own an Xbox. Fast forward to 2025, and Xbox is even launching games on PlayStation, with them more or less stating that exclusives are an outdated concept, which raises questions about whether or not Microsoft sees Xbox as more of a publisher than a platform these days. Meanwhile, Sony has recently announced that its taking the opposite approach, and stepping back from its relatively recent move of porting more of its games to PC – they seem to be joining Nintendo by walling their garden back up.

When it comes to particular exclusives, I’m a Halo fan, and it’s hard to not talk about how much cachet the Halo series has lost since Bungie left Microsoft. There have been non-stop issues around the series since the hand-off to 343 Industries. It’s been fixed and further improved since, but the Master Chief Collection, one of the Xbox One’s most attractive exclusives, was a bit of an infamous blunder when first launched. Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite are all surrounded by their own controversies as well. A more negative perspective on this could paint this as Microsoft essentially killing the goose that laid the golden egg. While I don’t view the situation quite as harshly, there’s no denying that the Halo franchise isn’t what it used to be. Still, I suppose it won’t be able to consider itself an Xbox console exclusive soon anyway.

Speaking of killing those golden egg laying geese, one odd thing about Microsoft’s acquisition of development studios over the years is that they’ve reportedly been relatively hands off when it comes to managing most of these studios and/or their projects. Going against the stereotype that publishers meddling in development is one of the primary reasons for so many problems with specific game releases, Microsoft has been accused of not meddling enough – leaving studios and their projects to fail due to mismanagement instead of lending their resources to ensure successes. Overall, it feels like we’ve seen more interesting games get cancelled than come out lately. Despite this, Microsoft has continued to gobble up more and more developers, including the insane acquisitions of ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard, bringing them under the Xbox Studios umbrella. Complaints about consolidation aside, Xbox fans wouldn’t be silly for thinking these would be massive wins for Microsoft, and yet very little of note has come out of most of these acquisitions.

Despite all of this, Microsoft has since conducted mass layoffs, even closing entire studios. This could be seen as (and indeed, was sold as) trimming the fat, but nothing encapsulates the controversy around this quite like the situation with Japanese studio Tango Gameworks. Tango released Hi-Fi Rush as a bit of a surprise announcement in January 2023, which went on to garner critical acclaim, and yet Tango was included in the May 2024 announcement of studios being shuttered. If the backlash from fans wasn’t already loud enough, Xbox Game Content and Studios head Matt Booty mentioned that Xbox needed more games which could secure “prestige and awards”. The contradiction and lack of logic around that situation was blatant, sealing yet another infamous chapter in Xbox’s history.

It’s hard not to blame a lot of this on Xbox’s focus on their Game Pass service as their primary sales strategy. For fans, it has been hard not to love Game Pass – access to most first party titles and a huge selection of third party titles, including day one access to new first party games. It’s always felt like a great deal, and the number of times a new game has been released that had some of my friends worrying about justifying the purchase, only for me to have it for “free” would have easily justified the cost if I was the type of gamer who played more games on day one. Still, from the early days critics have wondered how this was sustainable – surely Microsoft and individual third party studios would be leaving a huge amount of money from sales on the table in many cases. It can also be argued that services like Game Pass, along with huge sales on platforms like Steam, lower the perceived value of games, which isn’t a great thing when games cost more to make every year. More relevant to the discussion of studio closures, however, is a shift from looking at critical reception and sales numbers to looking at how launches of new titles on Game Pass impact subscriptions.

“The Series X. I love that hint of green!”

Another more recent controversy related to Game Pass has been the price hikes. Game Pass Ultimate went from $14.99 a month to $16.99 in 2023, then to $19.99 in 2024. At that point, the price was feeling a bit steep, but still felt like a fairly good deal, especially with the inclusion of Game Pass on PC and other services like EA Play. In 2025 the price went from $19.99 to $29.99, which kind of blew up the Internet. So many people cancelled their subscriptions as a result that Microsoft’s account management went down for a bit, and even I, someone who has had Game Pass since its inception, and Xbox Live Gold before that, downgraded from Ultimate to Premium. The price crossed over what I was willing to pay every month for a service like this, which is double the price of PlayStation Plus Premium, for the record, and unless this was a deliberate move to justify moving away from their Game Pass strategy, it felt like a massive blunder on Xbox’s part. Of course I have no idea what the numbers actually look like, but if social media is to be believed, a lot of people chose to jump off the Xbox bandwagon at this point.

When it comes to changes in strategy, starting in late 2024 we saw an advertising campaign that focused on, between Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming, the ability to play Xbox games on just about anything, with the slogan “This is an Xbox”. This aligned with the previously mentioned gradual shift to have just about all first party games available on PC, this has had people wonder if we’d see another generation of Xbox, and if we did, if it would be made by Microsoft themselves or perhaps licensed out to other manufacturers as some other consoles have done in the past. The release of the ROG Ally Xbox handheld suggested that neither of these is an impossibility, since despite the branding, it was made by Asus, and only supported PC games with no Xbox compatibility layer to boot.

Most recently we’ve had a bit of an abrupt changing of the guard at Xbox, with Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond both out. Phil Spencer has been a divisive figure, as despite being the CEO of Microsoft Gaming since not long after the Xbox One launch and therefore being, in one way or another, accountable for most of the negative things listed here, he seemed to do a lot right in terms of recovering from that terrible Xbox One launch, and his passion for gaming actually felt genuine, which is pretty rare in the industry. Still, his boilerplate corpo-speak communications around things like the aforementioned layoffs and studio closures does bring some of this into question. Still, it’s much more concerning that he was replaced by a former executive in AI at Microsoft, especially when AI is already being blamed for so many layoffs and other random enshitification in gaming and in tech in general. While I don’t think she was put in place to kill Xbox, as some doomsayers have theorized, I do suspect this will herald some sort of major changes in direction for Xbox.

Yet, when you add all of this up, it really does seem like Xbox has taken themselves out of the game. Sales have suffered so much this generation that there was a news story being widely discussed about the third largest retailer in the world, Costco, based just down the street from Microsoft, no longer carrying Xbox consoles. Things sure seem pretty damn bleak right now.

Xbox: The Future?

To end this on a bit more of a positive note, the next Xbox, code named Project Helix, was officially unveiled at GDC 2026, and I’ve been surprised by how positive a lot of the response has been. As suspected, we know this next generation of Xbox will be yet another step towards the platform essentially being a Windows PC, but given the impressive Windows 11 “Xbox Mode” that debuted with the Rog Ally Xbox, I think we’d be safe to look at this more as an Xbox that can play PC games than a PC that can play Xbox games. That said, I’m particularly curious about how this new Xbox will handle allowing other stores, like Steam, to run on the platform, and indeed, if they will port their entire experience (including backwards compatibility with older Xbox 360 and original Xbox games) to the Windows based Xbox app. Here’s hoping any skepticism around Project Helix and Xbox Gaming’s new CEO is just that, but I can’t blame anyone for betting against Xbox at this point. Even then, as impressed as I’ve been with the PlayStation 4 and 5, I don’t think we’d want to exist in a world where Sony doesn’t have any legitimate competition – if you were around in those days, and not a Sony fanboy, I’d guess you remember Sony’s insane hubris during the first couple of years of the PS3 era. Yikes.

Images stolen from some low effort Google Images searches.