Yeah - I was a PC gamer back then and the Xbox was trying to do what we were doing on real computers already.

Most games are pretty simple. You jump on enemies, you die, you have to insert another quarter to continue. The XBox changed that.

That is a really cool idea! Can it be used as a media client, and do Jellyfin or something? I don’t know what the HW is like

Every Xbox having a hdd was a huge upgrade for consoles. Part of me still believes MS made it as hackable as it was on purpose to build a support base. Anyway, I also enjoyed loading these up with movies and games for my friends. Good times.

It looks like the type of game you see one time at your cousin’s place in 2002 and when you’re older you cannot understand if it was a dream all along and spend nights figuring out what it was

all that to say, it looks rlly interesting! too bad I don’t have a xbox.

The article does make some interesting arguments about the changes, here are some excerpts:

That hard drive was particularly important. Players could save progress without purchasing memory cards, while games could use the storage for caching data and reducing loading times. Owners could even rip music CDs to the machine and listen to their own soundtracks in supported games. The built-in Ethernet port was another forward-looking decision, even if Microsoft’s online service was still some way off.

First-person shooters had already enjoyed tremendous success on consoles, particularly with GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64, but Halo helped establish a new standard for the genre. While it wasn’t the first console shooter to use two analogue sticks, its intuitive approach to movement and aiming, with the left stick controlling movement and the right controlling the camera, helped establish the control scheme that would become standard across the industry. Combined with recharging shields and carefully structured combat encounters, Halo would influence first-person shooters for years afterward.

Its wildly known persistent storage was a first in consoles tha is to the Xbox. DirectX also standardized quite a bit with gaming, also developers have quoted many times by saying the dev kits and developer experience were elevated by the Xbox team.

It changed quite a bit.

Well we’ll certainly disagree with that idea

It was the first to implement a standard online service with matchmaking, partially thanks to the built-in ethernet port. First to include a hard drive. Hell, you could rip CDs to the thing and play your own music in some games. And, I mean, fuckin’ HALO, particularly Halo 2. They built Xbox Live for the Xbox 360 off of what Bungie had built for the game. Not to mention the ‘standard’ controls that literally every shooter on consoles has started with Halo. Hell, it was the first console that supported HD resolutions. The PS5 only exists in the world that the original Xbox helped make.

I disagree, it helped get us to where the console market is today. 🤣

Well, for console players, an Xbox was the only way to play Counter Strike (which didn’t release until years later and may not have been a priority without Halo’s popularity), and Unreal Tournament came out in 2000 on PS2 and 2001 on Dreamcast, and those ports were pretty bad. What Halo did was bring the FPS experience to a controller, not just a console. Before that it was hit and miss with controllers and FPS games. Halo is where the layout really locked in.

What matters even more is Halo 2 bringing things like matchmaking, parties, and playlists to FPS games. Without that, consoles would still be stuck on server lists. Would all of those innovations have happened without Halo? Would CoD and Battlefield be where they are now without Halo? Probably. But Halo is what brought them up.

And you say that the 360 was where console online gaming really came into it, but Xbox Live on the original Xbox was amazing. Voice comms while playing Ghost Recon. MechAssault. Rainbow Six 3. The Dreamcast tried, but it never made the leap. The Xbox and the Halo series are what pushed consoles into a closer parity with PC gaming, and you can see how true it is just by looking at the offerings that Sony and Nintendo have made. Sony has caught up now, but it took them years longer to follow Microsoft’s blueprint, and Nintendo still hasn’t figured out how to do proper online gaming.

If it isn’t for you, it isn’t for you, and that’s fine. However, calling it over-rated and crappy is a pretty hot take. That’s like booting up DOOM and saying, “Why bother, we already have Wolfenstein.”

I bought the whole Halo collection (maybe one of those Humble Bundles, I don’t remember) after hearing everyone raving online how great it is, not realizing that it was a console game.

I was never a console gamer, because I hate walled gardens. Also, I prefer mouse and keyboard, having spent way too many hours on Doom, Quake and Half-life.

Halo felt… weird. There were levels where you would go into nearly the same room (with small variations) to kill the exact same number and type of enemies.

Some parts were fun, like the vehicles. But by then I’d already played Half-Life 2.

I was underwhelmed by the whole thing, I did not even finish trying all the collection because of the huge amount of space it took on disk, even if you only wanted to play one of the games of the series.

This is just the opinion of someone who is not into consoles. I’m sure that if I’d bought the console and this was the only game I had, I’d probably love it, warths and all.