The XBox 360 is seriously underrated.

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

So, I was looking through the critic's reviews of HD consoles, and it easily has more A+ to A- ranked games than either the Wii or PS3, but also the consoles that replaced them, including the Switch.

It also beats out old favorites like the Saturn, N64, and Gamecube. In fact, you'd need to compare the library to the all time greats, like the SNES, to find a similar depth of top tier titles.

And yet, almost nobody talks about it today.

So, what happened? And do any of you have fond memories?

Or still play the 360's library?

[JohanOberg]

Xbox 360 is Microsofts greatest console and I don't know who would argue about that.

[Retro STrife]

Is it underrated? If so, I agree with you. The Xbox 360 isn’t just Microsoft’s best console- it’s the best and most important console of this century. If I was ranking the most important consoles ever, I’d rank it #3- NES and Atari 2600 first, then Xbox 360, then Playstation or Game Boy. Almost everything that we consider mainstays of modern gaming - excellent online play and features, digital marketplaces (especially for indie titles), console dashboards and all the features that come with them - are because of the innovations Microsoft put into the 360. Yes, others did versions of this sooner, but Microsoft evolved it leaps and bounds, made it actually intuitive, and forced Sony and Nintendo to play catch up from about 10 miles and 30 miles behind, respectively. On top of that, it had the best library of the generation, hands down.

If anything marred the 360, it was technical issues, especially the Red Rings of Death- which almost every early adopter got hit with, or scared off people from even buying the console. On top of that, Microsoft failed to keep it’s positive momentum going with it’s newer consoles - Sony has taken back the reins as the better console again - so that also impacts how people look back at the 360. Microsoft has also failed to create the same loyal (sometimes unreasonably loyal) fanbases that Sony and Nintendo have.

Surprisingly, the PS3 even edged out the 360 in sales with a last second surge. Wikipedia shows PS3 at 87 million, and 360 at 84 million. Wii beat both at 101 million, but that was boosted by a entirely separate casual-gamer phenomenon that was more of a fad than an evolution.

[CaptainCruch]

I think the Xbox 360 was great (except for the red ring of death). It has one of the best gamecontroller I ever experienced and it was the first console that really gave me that 'next generation' feeling (mainly thanks to titles als Gears of War, BioShock, Call of Duty and GTA 4-5.

[ActRaiser]

Great points on all of them. I really loved that MS got online right. Every digital game needed to have a trial mode. The UI for the operating system was slick and only got slicker with time.

The Xbox One took everything that was great about the 360 and tossed it out and started over. You had 7 years of updates and infrastructure tossed out.

I loved the 360. The Xbox One was horrible from a UI standpoint. It's one unique feature that was cool was the voice commands with Kinect. And after a year they completely gimped it and tossed it out by removing a core dedicated to the Kinect. There goes the one useful aspect of it.

The 360 controller feels right. The Xbox One controller has too tall sticks that don't feel good in comparison. MS also went cheap on the Xbox One controllers and you can't tell if you're the 1st or 3rd player connected controller wise. Those LEDs must have been really expensive....It's an all around far worse system than the 360. Sad.

Definitely agree on the 360 being at the top of the list.

[VideoGameCritic]

Timely topic! I recently cranked up my old 360 to review Blood Stone: 007.

The library of games available for this system is tremendous. It was around when it was still okay to release arcade-style games in addition to realistic simulations. The HD graphics hold up, and the hefty controller feels great.

It's hard to ignore issues with the hardware however. Besides the obvious red ring of death, which may have been the most glaring manufacturing defect in history, there is the fact that the system fan runs LOUD.

When I play Blood Stone it sounds like I'm in a wind tunnel, and it undermines the game's audio. I wish I could set the console in another room and just run a long wire to the TV.

[Matchstick]

I don’t think the 360 is underrated at all. I feel that the only ones that don’t look back on it fondly are those that either never owned one, or those that were superfans of one of Microsoft’s rivals. Everyone else seems perfectly capable of recognizing the console for the quality piece of work that it was - durability issues aside.

But hey, at least MS (at the time) would replace your faulty console for free if you were one of the early adopters, which is much more than I can say for anyone whose launch model PS3 went belly-up on them after a few years of use...

[Alucard1191]

All my friends went from mainly sega and nintendo to X-box when the first one came out, and then all of them got 360's at launch. Yes, everyone of my friends had a red ring of death.

But Microsoft handled it and there we go.

I don't feel the system is underrated or under talked about though. Maybe it's just my social circle but we all love our 360's and still speak of them fondly. Of all my relatively modern systems, the 360 and my switch get the absolute most play.

The controllers are great, the later renditions of the system are great, (I have a 360 S that came into my store. HDMI, built in wi-fi, sleaker design then the white older models.) and like most of you are saying it has a fantastic library. And that is without counting its X-box backward compatibility, which isn't perfect but most main games work on it. I have Halo 1+2 and Ninja Gaiden Black and they have 0 issues on the 360.

It is honestly one of my favorite systems. Great library, decent wi-fi controllers, plays DVDs and has a good amount of onboard storage. What's not to like?

Edit: You know Matchstick, my PS3 that I brought home took a long time to update. I had to physically wire it to my router to get the connection stable enough to work. Then after all that I played Portal 2 one time for under an hour to test the console... then the next time I tried to play it no disc reading. I've tried multiple games and a DVD and it won't read shit. After going through everything to get it updated too! (My 360 has no problem getting the wi-fi to connect to my router.)

I have a replacement one in my car from my wife's 2nd hand store, (and a third one if that one doesn't work...) but I've never worked so hard to get a system to work for the laser to stop reading the literal NEXT DAY after I finally got the stupid thing working. The PS2 is one of my favorite systems of all time, but the PS3 doesn't seem to have the same magic at all

[Alucard1191]

Sorry, double post: hey Mr. VGC, what model 360 are you running? I have the model S and it doesn't make any noise. Runs great. My Dreamcast on the other hand sounds like it can break at any moment... and that's just how the system is, I'm on my 2nd Dreamcast and they both sound awful when reading the disc.

[Matchstick]

My PS3... I've never worked so hard to get a system to work...

I don't want to derail this thread, Alucard, but I've posted at length in other forums about my poor experiences with the PlayStation family of products. All three consoles of Sony's that I've owned (PS1, PS2, PS3) died on me at various points in time.

The PS1 lasted the longest, but after a few years would only read game discs if I either gave them a little "startup spin" before I closed the lid, or if I played the console upside-down, or tilted at an angle.

My PS2 was a launch console, and stopped reading CD media (PS1 games, blue PS2 discs, and music discs) about a year later. DVDs would still work, but would take minutes to load. After a while, every disc gave me a "Disc Read Error" message. I called Sony, who told me there was nothing they could do as the system was past its one year warranty - by two months. But they offered to let me send it to them for repair, for the price of $150 plus return shipping. No, thanks!!

(I was especially upset about the PS2, as I had traded in my Dreamcast and my entire DC library to get it. Biiiiiiig mistake...)

The PS3 was the worst. I bought it new, not from the store, but from an ad on Craigslist, from someone who had received it for their birthday but had wanted a 360 instead. Smart guy. It was an original 20 GB model, which had only wired Ethernet, played Super Audio CDs, and was fully backwards-compatible with PS1 and PS2 games. My girlfriend and I went halfsies to buy it, and she played it far more than me. Used it for movies, too.

After a little over a year, the fans on it started to get really, really loud, and one day, we went to turn it on to find the "Yellow Light Of Death." I called Sony three different times. The first two times, I was re-directed to a different agent, but always got the same response - it was out of warranty. On the third try, I asked for a supervisor, and got a combative gent who told me the same "out of warranty" line.

(Mind you, this was after a buddy of mine had already gotten his 360 replaced by Microsoft - twice. And for free, both times. And they never questioned how long he had it, or even mentioned the warranty - the repairs were covered, no questions asked.)

So, back to the Sony rep. I told him about my friend's experience with MS customer service, and he replied, more or less, "Well, that's because they make bad products." I then informed the rep of how many Walkmans I went through as a kid, and how my Dad's Sony stereo receiver blew up on him one day. And, of course, the PS1 and PS2. I finished by saying, "Look, either you guys repair this - for free - or I will never buy another Sony product again, as long as I live."

His response? "Oh, I highly doubt that." And I was again told that my PS3 would not be repaired, but could be "serviced" for a $250 fee.

Welp, that was that! I hung up, and have stayed true to my word ever since. No interest in a PSP. No interest in a PS4. No interest in a PS5. I haven't even bought Sony items second-hand, like when I see speakers at yard sales or thrift shops. That brand is forever tainted for me after those experiences.

But Microsoft? They earned a lot of goodwill in my book for saving the Xbox brand during the 360 "Red Ring" fiasco. I read in Forbes a while ago that it cost them over a billion dollars to service all those faulty consoles, and to do damage control in the years following. My wife had a 360 when we met, and I was beyond impressed with its software, interface, and functionality. We've since bought an Xbox One, and while it doesn't get much use - and we don't like it as much as the 360 - we're still happy to have it.

MS did a lot to earn my business over the years, while Sony did all they could to lose it. Their loss