It may be considered one of the front-runners today, but Xbox didn't join the console wars until 2001, quite a while after Sony, and an age after Nintendo. However, Xbox's initial splash was so great that its wave has carried the brand to where it is today, even despite some misfires along the way, and one of the company's biggest misfires was the Xbox One.
Launched on November 22, 2013, the Xbox One had quite a tumultuous history. While the Xbox One certainly isn't considered a failure, there's no denying that it didn't quite live up to Microsoft or fans' expectations, with some awful pre-release marketing, a lackluster selection of console exclusives, and barely any features that made it stand out from its competitors. The Xbox One was a bit of a disappointment all around, and its launch-day line-up was a sign of things to come.
The Highlights of the Xbox One's Launch Line-Up
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Battlefield 4
- Call of Duty: Ghosts
- Crimson Dragon
- Dead Rising
- FIFA 14
- Fighter Within
- Forza Motorsport 5
- Just Dance 2014
- Killer Instinct
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- LocoCycle
- Madden NFL 25
- NBA 2K14
- NBA Live 14
- Need for Speed: Rivals
- Powerstar Golf
- Ryse: Son of Rome
- Skylanders: Swap Force
- Xbox Fitness
- Zoo Tycoon
- Zumba Fitness: World Party
While cross-generation games have been a thing since Nintendo's first few consoles, the Xbox One and PS4 brought them back in full force. The Xbox One's US launch line-up is filled with cross-generation games. While these games are technical improvements over their previous-gen counterparts, they're not fully-fledged next-generation experiences, and they did little to convince early adopters that they hadn't just wasted their money. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, and Call of Duty: Ghosts are all prime examples of this abundance of cross-generation games at the Xbox One's launch, and though they looked prettier and ran better, there's no escaping the fact that they're the same experiences as the Xbox 360 counterparts.
The disappointment only continued when players got their hands on the handful of games that were actually brand new and exclusive to the Xbox One. Forza Motorsport 5 was set to be the pinnacle of the series before launch, but on release fans found it incredibly disappointing, lacking a lot of the variety and content that they'd come to expect from the series. Crimson Dragon was another big disappointment, with fans hoping that it would be the spiritual successor to Panzer Dragoon that it was marketed to be, but being let down by the absurd implementation of microtransactions.
Thankfully, the Xbox One wasn't without a handful of solid day-one games. Dead Rising 3 was a good entry in the popular zombie hack-and-slash series, with a vast number of enemies on screen showcasing the Xbox One's processing power. Killer Instinct was a surprisingly great fighting game, reviving a long-dormant franchise for a new age. And Ryse: Son of Rome may not have been the big killer app that it was expected to be, but its visuals and atmosphere are still impressive today, ten years later. Unfortunately, the lack of console exclusives would only be a sign of things to come for the Xbox One.
In a bizarre move, Microsoft also forced early adopters to buy the brand-new iteration of the Kinect alongside their Xbox One console, citing that the console just wouldn't work without it. As should be expected from the infamously awful peripheral, the Kinect gave the Xbox One some of the worst titles on its launch-day line-up. Fighter Within is still widely considered to be one of the worst games ever made for the console with a disgustingly low 23% on Metacritic. The vast majority of the Xbox One's launch line-up had some form of Kinect integration, and the critical reception across the board was bad, with critics at the very best saying that the integration simply felt unnecessary, and at worst claiming that it ruined the entire experience. On the whole, the Xbox One didn't have a great launch, and it only continued to go downhill for the console.