Xbox, 20 Years Later - Retrospective Review

in the early 2000s the playstation 2 absolutely dominated the console market it outsold everything by a massive margin with a huge game library and a built-in dvd player but there was a technically more powerful console available in the 2001 xbox microsoft's first full foray into the console market and while the xbox wouldn't sell nearly as well as the playstation 2 it would garner a dedicated fan base that would swing momentum their way at the beginning of the next console generation hey how's it going i'm josh from 91 tech and the first xbox is an absolute unit and it's also pretty obvious why it's called xbox i mean it's got a giant dex it's kind of awesome so today we're going to be taking a look at the xbox all these years later with both the story around it and how it holds up in modern times [Music] um [Music] [Music] okay yeah i have to acknowledge that that was the weirdest commercial for any video game system i have ever seen and this is coming from a guy who did an hour long video on sega and they have a lot of pretty crazy commercials i cut actually a lot of it out to shorten it and supposedly it was a band as well which wouldn't surprise me but anyways let's get right into this video the original xbox is huge just giant until the ps5 i'd say it was the biggest console although it actually looks kind of reasonable compared to the oversized white router so there's that it's pretty clear how the xbox name plays into the system as it quite literally is a box with a big x which is kind of an awesome design element and for such an awesomely designed console you're going to want to make sure it's forever functional there's an essential mod every single xbox owner needs to do with their xbox if you haven't already and that's remove the clock capacitor that might sound fancy but it isn't it's a large capacitor on the motherboard that basically provides power so the console remembers the time when you unplug it so you don't need to set it every time you plug it into a new place the problem is these capacitors from the early 2000s were very cheaply made and 10 to 15 years down the road can suffer from leakage issues and if acid ever gets on your motherboard it can kill your console completely i'm gonna post a link in the description to a really good video that gives a tutorial and also explains everything behind the clock capacitor so i strongly recommend checking that out if you have an xbox i'm not going to waste time fixing it here on camera it's a fairly simple process you can remove it by hand or with some pliers and it doesn't need to be replaced after not every xbox needs to do this so i'll also link a wiki page that goes more in depth on that mine was from 2002 so it did but once this was done i turned on my xbox and sure enough it was still working and of course now without the clock capacitor every time i unplug the console doesn't matter how long it's been the clock will need to be reset so looking at the inside of the xbox i have to say it's pretty cool that really looks like a pc board which makes sense given it was made with pc components it also was surprisingly clean it was a little bit dusty so i did end up air blasting it with compressed air a little bit later but still it must have been not that used over its lifetime or maybe just in a well ventilated area but let's back up here a little bit before we talk too much about the hardware and the games like the revolutionary halo let's establish a bit of context behind the console itself coming into the new millennium the only next-gen system that was out yet was the sega dreamcast with the playstation 2 launching in 2000 the dreamcast is really interesting to look at because technically the xbox wasn't really the first console microsoft worked on the dreamcast was that's right and on the front of the console we even have a little compatible with windows ce badge the dreamcast was so ahead of its time and it really should have done a lot better in sales than it did but once the playstation 2 would come out the brand was such a behemoth sega just couldn't survive the original playstation had done so well and the sega saturn had already hurt them financially and ruined their reputation microsoft had developed actually a custom version of windows ce using directx for the dreamcast making it easy to port pc games to the platform despite this being what i would consider a great idea developers would end up preferring sega's development tools so it didn't really get utilized a lot another interesting fact the dreamcast was the first console to have online connectivity capabilities which was super futuristic the dreamcast would go on to sell nine million units which isn't too bad given it was around for only about two years and once it was discontinued it really looked like sony and nintendo were well set to rule yet another console generation but that wouldn't be the case with the xbox actually outselling the gamecube now to say nintendo and xbox were necessarily competition with the playstation 2 might actually be a bit disingenuous as here's a chart of all the sales from this console generation and as you can see playstation kind of destroyed the ps2 ended up being the best selling console of all time and by a very very very wide margin compared to its competition the gamecube doing worse than the xbox might be kind of surprising but the gamecube was actually much more of a failure than people usually realize what really kept nintendo afloat during this time were their handheld sales and had the wii not been an insane success they may have stopped making home consoles altogether but this just goes to show you why sega couldn't keep up both microsoft and nintendo were not hitting the sales numbers they wanted and in microsoft's case they were selling the console at a loss to begin with with the manufacturing price being significantly more expensive than the retail and all in all microsoft would lose 4 billion in the system throughout its lifetime it didn't sell great outside of the western market either which wasn't a big surprise given microsoft was an american company actually one of the first when it came to big players in the game industry with nintendo sega and sony all being from japan it may not have sold the best but where the real success lied with the xbox was in the games online connectivity and hardware which would perfectly lead into the next generation microsoft took that initial loss to set themselves up as a console maker in the future and i have a lot of respect for that mindset and it worked the xbox 360 was a huge success right from the get-go at first taking real advantage of the ps3 being too expensive and impractical at its launch the xbox 360 as well as xbox live really managed to get a grip on the console industry and while right now they're not doing as well as nintendo or sony they're still making consoles and the future looks bright so i know i've covered a lot of the background and we should move on here to the actual launch of the xbox itself which saw the beginning of a video game revolution in both xbox live and halo paving the way for not only first person shooters but all video games of the future i just got into xbox live i have this really great high-speed connection and i was playing one-on-one nfl fever against some other players from around the country now my gamer tag my uh my online id is dark master i was just being friendly i mean i'm not one of those game guys that gets like totally absorbed you know taste it yeah that's gotta hurt it's pretty soon i had like the highest score in the country [Music] actually i i think there was one other person that was above me i mean hey it was no big deal oh i don't think so so i decided to be fun to contact this guy and challenge him all right how about it crusher see who gets greetings crusher [Music] come on it's the end of the game i think i lost the football game how about a different game homeboy well anyway one of us suggested playing a different game think you can cap my flag bring it on dark ass passer all right let's kick some tail [Music] oh come on we just barely lost i i think i just got tired it wasn't right though i wasn't like i was all distraught or anything about losing you know why i mean it would have been nice to have won but uh hey you win some you lose some right well i don't know much about all that but as long as you can fit into that chicken suit the job is yours [Applause] microsoft had seen the playstation 2 launch a year before the xbox and the ability to play dvds concerned them as they first saw consoles overtaking personal computers in the home and given that their main business was in fact computers this concern made a lot of sense with this in mind the xbox was built around typical pc components with variations of windows and directx and software to play games and media it was essentially a pretty good pc for the time not unlike the playstation 5 and xbox series x of today actually it even had a built-in hard drive like you would find in a computer being the first console to integrate this and that wasn't the only major addition taken from computers he also had an ethernet port which allowed for broadband connectivity which meant with xbox live eventually you could play games online and that opened a whole rabbit hole of opportunities that early grasp of online gaming would be the major selling point of the console along with of course bungie's halo which we'll talk about when we get to the actual games the launch of the xbox would take place in the november of 2001 in north america being one of the most famously clipped announcements ever with bill gates and dwayne the rock johnson showing off the system yeah the 2000s were so much better when it came to showmanship the north american launch would be huge with 1.5 million units sold before the end of 2001 and by the april of 2002 halo combat evolved would have already sold a million units as the headlining exclusive title for the system caleb would go on to sell 4.2 million units by the july of 2006 which was huge for a game in the early days of gaming or at least earlier days of gaming i guess it wasn't really the early days anymore but it was still super impressive and halo 2 would launch in 2004 with a record-breaking 1.5 million copies being pre-ordered and huge lines forming at over 7 000 midnight launches across north america hilo 2 would actually become the highest grossing release in entertainment history making over 125 million dollars in its first day just insane this of course attracted the attention of the mainstream media and it played a big part in making video games what they are today not just a niche platform for nerds and kids but a fun entertaining outlet enjoyed by millions and millions of people through every age and nationality and group it was finally becoming mainstream and halo 2 would eventually sell over 8 million units making it the best selling original xbox game by a wide margin it was also one of the biggest early online games with xbox live the multiplayer being just a fun experience that wasn't possible to the same extent with the playstation 2. i brought a ton of specific features in halo 2 for online play such as a matchmaking system which allowed you to just automatically find yourself a game instead of manually selecting a lobby and also allowed you to party up with friends and just find a game for whatever you wanted to play this was huge for online gaming and would eventually be integrated into xbox live itself in the early days of the 360. the xbox made the impossible possible who in the 90s envisioned being able to play video games with someone halfway across the world at any time instantly the internet is such a crazy innovation and so easy to take it for granted now that it's so commonplace where the dreamcast would fail xbox didn't the dreamcast connected to the internet with dial up by default and i mean it came out in 1999 so that makes sense but xbox live launched a year after the console and would require an actual broadband connection with the built-in ethernet port this would ensure top-of-the-line internet speeds for all players which was essential for a smooth gaming experience it was also helped by the full-blown hard drive which would provide a huge amount of storage space which meant downloadable content could be available and provided faster speeds than previously possible with other consoles i cannot fully express just how important the xbox was in setting up the future of video games nowadays there are so many titles that integrate online play that it's harder to find a game that doesn't and they can all thank xbox live back in 2002 for starting the whole thing off in a much more usable and convenient format than the dreamcast did games that could be played on xbox live or had downloadable content for the original xbox would have this orange bar under the xbox header on the game case to let you know it was an xbox live game by the july of 2004 xbox live had reached 1 million users online and only a year later in 2005 it would hit 2 million xbox live support for the original xbox would finally be shut down the april of 2010 and since then there have been workarounds actually developed for certain games that allow users to system link to other consoles over the internet always need to see how people push old tech to its limits even so long later let's look at this absolute unit of the console itself the xbox is just massive as i said earlier compare it to the playstation 2 and the size difference is crazy enough but then look at it compared to the 2004 ps2 slim and it just gets laughable literally laughable the ps2 slim at the time would have been equal competition to this crazy big xbox and it's not much bigger than like the disc tray on the xbox the xbox having an actual hard drive and pc components had increased the entire size of the system and while it's totally fair to prefer not to have such a big plastic box sitting by your tv i honestly doubt many were very concerned with the size and it was still smaller than an actual pc what does a big console need a big controller and don't worry the original xbox had just that with the duke as it would be nicknamed as well as the slightly less flattering nickname fatty you can see it here as i recently picked it up off ebay in a bundle with the generic third-party controller and the more common smaller s controller for about 30 bucks canadian which is pretty good for three controllers and you can see just how big the duke really is compared to that s controller here it's huge bulky and just ridiculous even awarded blunder of the year by gameinformer in 2001 and ranked the second worst video game controller of all time by ign the designer apparently had never even used a game controller before being brought onto the project i feel like that's not a huge surprise although it's hard to blame her completely as apparently the circuit board was very poorly designed and needed a shell this big like it was just a huge circuit board for the controller but clearly they knew how to do it better because the s-controller exists and it was actually the launch controller in japan a year after the xbox launched microsoft rightly gave up on the duke and started selling the controller s and bundling it in with all their consoles instead of just the japanese market and so that's the more familiar xbox controller that feels actually quite similar to a 360 controller we even have triggers here which is pretty cool and they push in just like a modern controller but we don't have bumpers instead we get these white and black buttons on the s controller they work fine but on the duke they're actually right above and beside the main four x y a b buttons so while playing with the duke controller i found myself accidentally hitting those buttons way too often as i was trying to hit either b or y i didn't help the main buttons were shaped a little bit differently more like ovals instead of a typical circle and it just felt really off to me one thing the duke really did well though as well as on the s controller is the offset joysticks as this is a trend that has continued to this day with most controllers out there doing something similar except for playstation you might notice it looks kind of like a dreamcast controller and it even has like this accessory slot here where apparently you can put in a memory card if you can't fit everything on the hard drive or maybe you want to bring saves portably but either way it's cool and again a lot like the dreamcast there was a lot of inspiration taken from the dreamcast it's obvious and i think that's pretty cool one thing that i do really like about these old controllers is they are wired of course and they plug into the front of the console where we have four controller ports but the wires are actually quite long and they have these breakaway cables so if you yank on the cord or whatever they pretty easily just pop off this almost like a dongle that plugs into the console itself giving it not only a little bit of extra length but also making it a little bit safer notably also the playstation 2 only had two ports for controllers and you would need an adapter for four player games and split screen gaming would be very popular on the xbox particularly with the much loved halo multiplayer all in all the controller situation was pretty darn good on the xbox it was rough to start with the duke but some people do really nostalgically look back at it and using it today it's not that bad i just feel like there's no reason for it to be this big but for whatever reason a lot of people like this controller probably just nostalgia let's be real so partnered with microsoft hyperkin actually made a new version of this controller for xbox one and pc a few years back but you can see here you can still buy it today and you know what that's actually pretty cool the design of the xbox as a whole is one i really like the black plastic shaped into the big x with the old bold xbox fonts on the front within that green circle and big grey power and eject buttons that light up green when it's turned on it all screams of the early 2000s and in a very good way in my opinion and if you're so inclined you can even find translucent plastic xboxes the most common being the green halo one which looks absolutely awesome i have a halo translucent controller and it looks awesome although yeah the joysticks are really well used to say in the very least but all in all love the design of the xbox and the green and black aesthetic is one microsoft has run with still using it today turning on the system we get that beautiful 3d animation with this green blob turning into the xbox logo and then i hope you like green because we get a lot of it with this menu it's a pretty simple os it'll bypass this if you have a disk in the system by the way just like the ps2 would and it's functional it's got a place for music and with home brewing you can open up a lot of possibilities including changing the colors but also using it to watch media so not a lot to say about the os other than its cool and very very 2000s i mean everything about this xbox is 2000s from the games to the media surrounding it the commercials some of which are extremely weird and it sure wasn't thanks to those commercials that the xbox sold so well we all know why it did halo 1 and halo 2 were the big ones but there were also a lot of other exclusive titles to the system that made it worth buying we've talked a lot about the hardware about xbox live about its launch and how microsoft were setting themselves up for the future but of course it's so important to remember why people love this console it isn't the console itself although that's a part of it it's the tremendous and fun library of games citizens of the world we are in deep doo-doo aliens there's a lot of them and they're meanies as peace-loving humans we must take up arms and by arms i mean guns united we will form a giant can opener and we will open a giant can of whoop ass [Music] halo combat evolved from its inception the xbox would get strong third-party support including 11 games exclusive to the system from sega such as jet set radio future and the exclusive greatness wouldn't stop there halo 1 and 2 aside you also had the likes of fable ninja gaiden forza motorsport star wars knights of the old republic jade empire the elder scrolls morrowind project gotham racing and one of my personal favorites fusion frenzy which was a four player collection of mini games similar to those from mario party and was probably the best party game for the system it's still fun honestly and is on xbox game pass so definitely worth a try with friends if you haven't played it before another noteworthy title came out of microsoft buying rare a developer for the nintendo 64 as we would get conker live and reloaded which was a remake of the 2001 classic that had solely been on the n64 beforehand the last game to ever release on xbox was madden nfl 09 in 2008 as developers had moved on pretty quickly interesting fact that i love telling people because it's insane the final game produced for the ps2 was fifa 14 up to the end of 2013. yes fifa 14 was available for the playstation 2 at about the same time the playstation 4 had launched that fact always blows me away and i've named some exclusives but obviously there were lots of games that came to all consoles of the generation which i won't get into too much but at least looking at the best selling game list or the original xbox this is from wikipedia but you had grand theft auto need for speed underground star wars battlefront and battlefront 2 just some really great games that would come to multiple platforms and the xbox was definitely one of if not the best place to play those games there's definitely always a debate between the ps2 and xbox but honestly in my opinion they both had their benefits and i think which exclusives you preferred probably was the biggest factor as well as of course xbox live but all this aside the two games that really managed to not only be the xbox's main system seller but completely revolutionized the gaming industry as a whole were of course halo 1 and halo 2. and i'm going to be dedicating some time to talk about these games because i think they really define what the xbox was without those games i don't know if there would have been an xbox 360. they really just made the console halo combat evolved believe it or not was originally a real-time strategy game that was going to come to mac and windows yeah mac it was actually first revealed at mac world in 1999 after bungie had met with and impressed steve jobs that's right steve jobs had his hand in halo of all things what didn't this guy touch pixar by the way yeah steve jobs was a co-founder this dude did everything i might actually end up doing a video fully on that whole story because it's absolutely fascinating to me but the long and short of it is that microsoft would end up swooping in when bungie was low on funds and acquiring them in 2000. at this point halo actually wasn't really that much more than a pretty disconnected collection of ideas that had been shown at mac world and it slowly became a third-person shooter from the rts and then eventually a first-person shooter the development time for the game where things were really happening was shockingly short but the game ended up accomplishing some impressive feats with many features that would become a staple in shooters such as aim assist and even assistance and player movement features and story plans had to be cut to make the release date and the choice to reuse levels in the campaign of halo 1 was made to save time and that was really clever they changed certain things about them and they were often in reverse and the maps were so big and opened it just kind of worked although it was a bit confusing they actually had to put arrows in a lot of the levels to lead players along as they found that people tended to get lost one of the main things praised with halo ce was the multiplayer while xbox live wasn't a thing yet with those four controller ports you could play four player multiplayer and then also system link where you could have multiple systems and then have even more players believe it or not four months before release they decided multiplayer wasn't fun so it was scrapped completely and rebuilt from the ground up apparently employees were sleeping in the office for the last few months to make the game's deadline it was all a mess but despite the rushed and chaotic development hilo was an absolute masterpiece not without its flaws but bringing an experience unlike any other game that had ever been created and the introduction for the player just from the gecko was absolutely perfect with the first level sticking you in a ship full of tight hallways with twists and turns and dead ends and then the second dropping you in the middle of a giant beautiful landscape giving you the choice and freedom to roam around and then giving you a car with the warthog to drive around i felt open worlds without being open world and ended up being one of the most iconic game levels in history and one of the most iconic games in history funny side note the name halo was one that marketing research teams hated as they felt like it would confuse customers who wouldn't know what the game was about that's why the subtitle combat evolved was added to give off the keywords and inform people hey this game is about military and shooting and you know killing things it was a smart touch and one that doesn't really detract from the title which is nice there was also some criticism concerning the colorful palette as the game was bright as opposed to dark and gritty like many other shooters but that would end up being one of the reasons people loved it this game has been remastered and ported over many times since and today probably the best way to play it is the master chief collection on xbox or pc although the original xbox version is considered the most superior as the pc version was kind of a broken port it's a long story although microsoft is fixing some of that stuff now basically you can play it in higher resolutions now which is nice and if you'd prefer there's the anniversary edition which has some newer looking graphics all in all halo ce was a crazy big success and so three years later in 2004 halo 2 would become the biggest entertainment launch ever and as already talked about would bring revolutionary online gameplay while managing to build on halo's pre-existing story universe and action the gameplay just got better halo 2 if even possible might have had a more chaotic development but it all came together in the end once again and master chief ever since has been a staple of gaming imagery for good reason i wanted to spend some specific time with halo because i love these games i've been playing through them lately on legendary and they're not easy halo 2 is ridiculous the best way to play halo 2 nowadays is without a doubt halo 2 anniversary on xbox and pc with the master chief collection it's just a fantastic remake of the game it's very faithful to the original much better than the combat evolved anniversary in my opinion there's something really cool with both anniversary games is how you can flip in and out of the old and new graphics at will it's so neat to see the differences and i found myself in almost every new area flipping through just to see what it looked like in the original versus the remake without a doubt the remake looks really good and it's much nicer graphically but the games hold up they really do the gameplay actually holds up surprisingly well it's got a lot of flaws but even playing it on the original xbox as i have the first halo for the xbox here this is me playing it with my commodore 64 video monitor the game actually feels pretty great i don't really like playing shooters with controllers but the aim assist helps a lot and it's just fun this is halo it's halo halo 1 and 2 defined this entire generation of gaming and while as stated there were definitely other great exclusives for the xbox like fable table's awesome halo was the title you bought the console for in the first place something worth mentioning here is the homebrew capabilities with the original xbox there's an impressively large emulation scene that's still surprisingly active here and there across the internet it's possible to do some crazy stuff like have the entire xbox game library loaded onto the hard drive and emulate basically any older gaming system including the nintendo 64 and playstation one believe it or not although of course the actual performance varies drastically depending on what you're doing and the game you're playing probably the easiest not really a mod but way to get your xbox to play in high definition is purchasing a component to hdmi converter for the system preferably one of the specific ones made for the system as it allows it to display natively in 720p or 1080i which is awesome and massively helps the system hold up in a modern setting a lot of games support the widescreen resolution as is so although i love playing it on the crt because it feels so nostalgic you can probably play it on at least a smaller widescreen and actually get pretty good quality on the flip side of all this if you're wanting to emulate the xbox on your pc that's where you're likely going to have issues the hardware of the xbox is strange and there hasn't historically been too much progress in emulating it there are definitely some cool projects out there but nothing that's anywhere near the reliability of even where we're at with the ps3 and xbox 360 emulation which has come very far and honestly i don't think it really matters as the vast majority of original xbox titles are either available on other platforms like pc or another platform like gamecube or ps2 that can be emulated with one of those emulators which are really reliable or is maybe backwards compatible with newer xboxes xbox nowadays is great with backwards compatibility with a lot of the old games being completely playable today if you want to play some of the old classics there are definitely options so that's always fantastic the games were great the xbox was great it was just all great and coming to the xbox 20 years later it's hard not to just have so much respect for the system and what it accomplished even if it didn't sell nearly as much as that playstation 2. the xbox holds up 20 years later as one of the greatest of video game consoles of all time as well as one of the most revolutionary and i don't think that's ever gonna change and with that i hope you enjoyed this nostalgic look back at the original xbox and its history two decades later i might not have grown up with it but i still really enjoy the system it's quite the machine and i'm glad i finally got the chance to take a look at it i've had this console just sitting around collecting dust for like a couple years now after finding it at a second-hand store for maybe 30 bucks so nice to put it to some use and have a nostalgic trip through the early 2000s just had a lot of fun making this video and i've had a lot of fun playing halo recently as well so i hope you all enjoyed this and with that i think i'm right about done here did any of you ever have the original xbox what was your favorite game and uh i mean okay it's probably halo but halo one or two make sure you leave a comment down below if you found this video interesting maybe hit that like button and consider subscribing for more content just like this you can follow me over on twitter and instagram at 91 underscore tech if you'd like to for some reason and we have a tech discord as well if you're into tag thank you so much for watching i really do appreciate it i'm josh from 91 tech and i will see you all next time [Music] you

Channel: 91Tech

Views: 216,980

Keywords: xbox, 20 years later, documentary, review, retrospective, xbox 360, xbox series x, xbox one, xbox series, first xbox, xbox 1, halo, halo 2, halo combat evolved, halo infinite, xbox live, xbox 2023, 2023, in 2023, xbox review, 2023 review, xbox in 2023

Id: 5jCYXx6NNwI

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021

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