Regardless of whether you’re a diehard Xbox fan or not, I think we can all agree that Microsoft’s grand reveal of the Xbox One really missed the mark.
The year was 2013. We all knew that a new Xbox console would be coming out at some point in the near future, and everyone was wondering what it’d be called. We’d originally gone from the plain ol’ Xbox to the Xbox 360, so there wasn’t a consistent naming convention. Even so, many expected that we could be getting the Xbox 720. That sounded futuristic and exciting enough.
Take a look at this satisfying (and also slightly disgusting) Xbox deep clean video below.
Alas, we all know that’s not how things panned out. Instead, we got the Xbox One - a name which continues to be highly confusing to this day given that it’s not the first Xbox console.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the name that was problematic at the console’s reveal - much of the hour-long press conference talking about the upcoming device was focused on the console’s non-gaming features (particularly watching TV). Cool, yes, but everyone obviously cared a lot more about the next-gen games that they could look forward to. What’s more, it was initially stated that the console would require users to connect to the internet at least once a day, which went down horribly (thankfully, Microsoft did a 180 on this decision following the backlash).
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Monday 21 May marked 10 full years since that fateful reveal, and gamers on Twitter still believe that it was a low point for Microsoft: “I hold, to this day, that that disastrous reveal sunk the Xbox One to a depth that Microsoft couldn’t recover from,” @NetsFanOntheNet tweeted.
Others agree: “This really damaged Xbox's rep and it feels like they're still paying for this today,” @NickelodeonSr wrote. “They fumbled that reveal so hard, not as bad as the PS3 reveal, [but] it was still pretty rough,” @DysonYF19 said. “Man, it’s been a decade and they still haven’t fully recovered from how awful that reveal was,” added @Snarkyloser.
Anyway, all’s well in the world for Microsoft now, as there’s absolutely nothing that’s recently gone wrong for Xbox. Nothing at all.