Gaming Microsoft's Xbox 360 to be discontinued after 10 year run

Seriously, let me know your favourite Xbox 360 games. I think I'll do a nice round-up towards the end of the week.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2016/04/20/xboxdiscontinued/1

 

Not only will the 360 servers continue for people with 360s, but the XB1 backwards compatibility uses them too. So that's going to keep the XBL side going for a while at least.

Main thing I loved about the 360 was watching it evolve. It's a completely different beast now to what it was at launch. Amazing how much they got out of it.

Some of my favourite memories from the 360 are probably Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 being my first 100%d games achievement-wise, then the multiplayer of AC:B changing my gaming life. No really, it did. I came to hate it, but it threw me into a world I didn't really know existed before. Made some great friendships (and enemies) along the way too. Gotham City Impostors was another one I miss dearly. Such good friends made in that game, it was a great laugh to play too.

 

My big Xbox 360 moment was probably Red Dead Redemption. What a game that was.

 

Earth Defense Force 2017 remains my favorite 360 game, and one of my favorite games of all time.

 

I don't really use consoles, but I am pleasantly surprised by it's longevity. We bought the kids a 360 and a Wii over successive christmases - the Wii was second, but has barely seen the light of day in years, yet the 360 is still used daily, by sprog2. Sprog1 has the XBone.

 

I hear sony will release a PS4.5 for VR reasons, so now I wonder if MS will release a 'One.5', for competitive reasons and maybe for their augmented reality thingy.
I don't think they updated their 360's much over its lifetime though, they made it smaller and less power hungry and larger HD but they didn't change core capabilities I think, although I don't keep up with consoles so maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe MS and sony should have put their CPU or GPU on a daughter-board for upgrading in-place with their latest consoles, after all they are very PC-like in design, and why not have an official PCIe graphicscard and then after a year or two release an official next gen. It could be contained in terms of having compatibility issues if they would only allow official ones and limited the amount of upgrading done.

 

You are wrong The 360 changed a LOT over its lifetime. The PS3 was more powerful but never could keep up with the changes.

 

Hardware wise, the changes weren't dramatic, (which is has my daughter still has my pre HDMI 360 in her room and (apart from sounding like its about to take off) it does all the things the 360 is capable of

Software wise, the original dashboard compared to the current one is dramatically different both in look and function.

 

Never going to happen. We will be lucky to see a PlayStation 5 or next gen Xbox as it is. If Sony and Microsofts recent conferences are anything to go by.

Consoles are really struggling to stay relivent with only a select few games getting huge sales, many developer studios have been closed in the last year alone.

The biggest games are free to play and it's very hard for Sony or Microsoft to subscribe to that Model when they do not make money on hardware.

What was a successful game in PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era is no longer a financial success in PlayStation 4 or Xbox one era. As the costs to develop games increase it makes it harder and harder for unique titles to exist.

It's the main reason we get so many Assasins creed games or call of duty for example. Both are big sellers and do not need huge outlay to make.

 

@rollo

I think the online games are what they make money on, free-to-play always means you need network access and to buy 'items' for the game, and it seems to be a cash-cow

As for updated consoles, MS already announced a slim version of the one, and sony clearly is coming with a PS4.5 to make their VR stuff viable. so it seems just almost a necessity for MS to also improve their console speed wise to stay relevant. Although MS is no stranger to mistakes and stupidly long hesitation of course.

And PC sales are still low, so if people don't want PC's but they do want to play games on something other than a tablet with its limitations, then it seems consoles are the ones having some lasting power. Even when the VR wave needs so much power that current consoles aren't really up to the task. Which brings me back to the point that consoles seem to be in need of more graphics power and thus require an update, or two.