RIP Xbox One: The flawed middle child of the Microsoft console family

Seattle, Washington - Since Microsoft has officially stopped making the Xbox One, it's time to revisit the good, the bad, and the awkward in the life of one of the most disappointing game consoles ever made.

Rest in Peace, Xbox One, you flawed console, you.
Rest in Peace, Xbox One, you flawed console, you.  © Collage: IMAGO / AFLO, Panthermedia

Microsoft's Xbox console product marketing lead, Cindy Walker, may have told The Verge that it fully stopped making new Xbox One consoles at the end of 2020, but for many Xbox fans, the console was dead on arrival way back in 2013.

I personally remember experiencing plenty of emotional highs and lows while playing on the Xbox One at a friend's house, among them trying out the new-and-improved Kinect 2.0 that picked up voice commands and had a built-in camera for games like Just Dance 2014.

But for every giddy moment of trying out the fresh features, there were two of utter frustration.

Jumbled and flawed

Xbox One exclusives didn't tend to do very well either.
Xbox One exclusives didn't tend to do very well either.  © IMAGO / STPP

Even though getting the voice commands to work was cool and new, more often than not the Kinect didn't quite catch what we meant, like a particularly hard-of-hearing Alexa, so we mostly just used the controllers to navigate the extremely jumbled home menu.

Jumbled is being generous, really.

When we wanted to start a game, the console's game library was organized so that it didn't separate the titles that needed a disc to run from those that would work without the game disc, adding an annoying new layer to the struggle to remember which disc is in which case.

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But you know what? Once we hopped into a game, all the tricky menu Snafus didn't get in the way of spending hours upon hours crushing the Halo series on the hardest difficulty, enjoying the masterfully crafted story of Grand Theft Auto V, or dancing the night away.

Disappointing or not, the console did end up selling well over 40 million units, according to IGN, so it's clear that a lot of people were more than willing to overlook its flaws.

So long Xbox One, you weren't the best, so this is just a tribute.

Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO / AFLO, Panthermedia

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