The Xbox 360 that exists in 2013 bears little resemblance to the console that Microsoft launched in 2005. It’s so different, in fact, that it helps to think of the company’s new Xbox One as an evolution, not of the original Xbox 360 but of the one that exists today.
Over that eight-year span, the Xbox 360 underwent radical transformations. In 2008, the New Xbox Experience delivered an entirely new interface, customizable player Avatars, eight-player party chat and Netflix streaming, a first for video game consoles. In 2010, the first iteration of Kinect and the platform’s voice and gesture controls redefined the 360 once again.
That focus on entertainment never diminished the Xbox 360’s gaming bona fides, however. Between first-party exclusives like Halo, third-party console exclusives like Left 4 Dead and timed exclusives like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the Xbox 360 never wanted for games. The Xbox Live Arcade program made games like Castle Crashers, Braid and Limbo into household names. Despite its investment in entertainment, the Xbox 360 was always a video game console.
But there was a sense that the Xbox 360’s greater aspirations as a mainstream portal for entertainment were restrained by hardware created before our current age of streaming video, tablets and smartphones.
So when examining the Xbox One, it may seem familiar. This is what Microsoft has been working toward all these years, effectively showing its next-generation hand as early as 2008. While the Xbox 360 was upgraded, the Xbox One was developed in parallel, but as a beginning, not an end. And despite its familiar elements and concepts, the Xbox One still manages a genuine sense of wonder, all without losing sight of the strong gaming foundation the Xbox was built on.