Goodbye Xbox One: a special place in my heart

 

The Xbox is one of the most iconic consoles in existence and its rivalry with the PlayStation has been chronicled through the years However, time has not been kind to the Xbox with the "One" generation getting obliterated by the PS4 and Nintendo Switch in terms of sales with the Switch and in the case of the PS4, power. Microsoft just wasn't bringing its A-Game with the One generation, thankfully the "Series" generation is a huge upgrade that hopefully will fare better to the test of time than the One generation. The legacy of the One series has been cemented and repeated: an underdog that never won. That may be the consensus, but I own the One S, and although it's too old to review I still want to comment on what I thought of the previous-gen, and give it a proper goodbye as I welcome the next-gen. 

The History

So first let's talk about the One generation, from the One, to the S, and finally the X. The original Xbox One launched in 2013, it improved on the earlier Xbox 360 with better CPU and GPU, the normal things. It also came with the Kinect that would ultimately be cancelled and shelved; it was an extra cost that basically sank the first Xbox One console. It also really pushed itself as an all-in-one streaming box to handle your games, tv, and fitness, it succeeded in some ways, but it still took away from the gaming experience. overall, the PS4 was a more powerful console and more focused on gaming, the Xbox One was an Xbox without an identity and one that really struggled to find one. 

 
 

 

Original Xbox One+Kinect 

 

The One S had a somewhat different approach, it was launched in 2016 and it really stuck less with the Kinect and leaned more into games and entertainment. It had the better specs that allowed for 4K HDR Blue ray playing with the disk drive and 4K upscaling for gaming, along with stable 1080p at 60FPS. It continued to lean into the all-in-one idea and continued to suffer from it as well, it struggled with multi-player at 4K/60FPS and when playing local multiplayer or split screen possibly due to RAM issues.  

Xbox One S (Mine is the top picture not this one)

 

The last thing on the list of cons is the storage experience, it came with a rather good amount of storage, but it was the lack of SSD technology that killed the S, you see the specs were similar to the PS4 of the time but the PS4 had an option to upgrade to SSD making it light-years faster than the hard disk in the Xbox. So even though it was technically as fast as the PS4 it simply felt slower in all the wrong ways, game content loading, multiplayer loading, everything. This is the true fall of the Xbox One generation because there were no SSD's, this made it impossible for game developers to make more sophisticated games for the Xbox, instead of feeling empowered with the Xbox they were frustrated and constantly limited by the storage.  PS4 also had a better HDD technology so even base hardware was faster than the Xbox. 

 

Xbox One X

 

The One X did right the ship for whatever it was worth, it brought in a massive GPU upgrade with true 4K gaming at 30 FPS, this was a breakthrough of the time with 1080p at 60FPS being the earlier standard. The biggest part of the update was the new hybrid storage disk, this made storage more expensive, however it also applied some water to the dumpster fire that was the Xbox storage situation. The hybrid drive gave some SSD to games whilst giving hard disk to cold storage, this allows for speedier in-game and multiplayer loads while still having initial game load times be a bit faster but still slower than it's PlayStation counterparts. The Xbox One X was technically the most powerful console of its time and that was a first for Xbox, for a console that's always been behind the One X rejuvenated Xbox and helped set Microsoft onto the path of the Series X and Series S.  

 
 

One last thing, this constant disadvantage helped breed the ultimate weapon that is playing a way bigger role in Xbox today: GamePass Ultimate.  

 
 

GamePass is the biggest service since Xbox live gold, the combination of games for the price of $10-$15 dollars a month made the Xbox a place for casual gamers who really didn't care about the specs. People like me who just wanted the content but not the speed, the content and not the exclusives, it's like paying for Netflix instead of Disney+ because you wanted to see more than just the Mandalorian. The PS4 exclusives were enough for some but for most people the relative cheapness of the Xbox One generation (the S got rebooted as the all-digital edition for $250) made it a must buy to break into gaming. That was my historian take on the legacy of the One Generation, it was a console for the consumer not the gamer, although that was their loss in the beginning it eventually became an advantage with GamePass. I just wish they had solved their worst problems (lack of SSD) sooner.  

 
 

My Experience

So now we get into my firsthand experiences and memories, I own and play games on the Xbox One S, it goes beyond the specs. When I first bought the Xbox One S it was part of a Minecraft bundle from Black Friday, I also bought Madden 17 and Forza Motorsport 6 on that day. I spent the most time in Madden and Minecraft, Minecraft on the Xbox was great and playing the built-in minigames with friends was smooth for the most part, it sometimes lagged when recording (possible RAM issue) but it was overall smooth to the touch. For me and my brother our Minecraft world was one of our proudest achievements, with a castle, railcar system, and parrot sanctuary. Madden was also one of my favorite games, with a quality team mode, and good local multiplayer for playing with friends. Although these games weren't exactly the most intense, they were still games that were important to me and my friends, and the One S worked fine for me.  

 

This is my Xbox One S

 
 

Later in the year I began to play Rocket league and put the online prowess of the One S on display. When I played Rocket League on split-screen it was great with the only limitation being my Wi-Fi, when my Wi-Fi was good the game was great. Although there was this one weird glitch were the colors just got completely messed up, but overall, it was great. 

 

I have no idea what this was...

Later with Star Wars Squadrons this barrier of mediocrity started to break down. When loading into the game it was kind of fast, but the hard disk made loading into story mode missions torture, it took at minimum 40 seconds to 1 minute to load the mission, it got even worse when I started going hardcore into online multiplayer. The load times went to 1-2 minutes minimum, with the worst being 3 minutes, look Squadrons has one of the best map systems I've ever seen because instead of downloading the map before playing the maps are stored in the local game file allowing for much lower latency when playing, and once fetched and loading there's no lag when retrieving objects because they've already been retrieved. It's genius and it really takes the load off older systems and even better with the Hard disk on all Xbox consoles, however the fact that it still takes a while to load might be a problem with my Wi-Fi. It's still something to say that loading in real-time might still be an issue but because I have no games to test that I'll leave that questions to my fellow nerds on the forums.  

 
 

How the One S looks vertical

My point is that the Xbox One S was my entry point into gaming, it was the alternative that worked and cheaper than the competition. The One S has been worth it and although if I had the money, I would have bought a PS4 I don't and never did, the Xbox has never been the console for the serious Gamer. It's been for people like, people that just want to blast all the tie fighters, play all the games, and just have fun. Not caring about the FPS, resolution, or load times, it's the games that make the difference and having access to them is worth it to me. It's worth the compromise to a lot of people. 

 
 

Farewell friend...

The Xbox One generation had its highs and lows, it's hard disk problems, and memory issues have plagued the generation up until it's last console. However, the issues and struggles of the generations made the real game changers of the modern world such as GamePass and Xcloud. If the Xbox had been dominant who knows if Microsoft would have thought of these ideas, these products, being the failure for the worst part of 6 years has opened the door for success in 2021. 

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