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The Xbox console brand has always been synonymous with power, although it’s not always been the most powerful. While the original Xbox was significantly more powerful than its contemporaries, the Xbox 360 was simply easier to work with. With the arrival of the Xbox One, Xbox took a big misstep, creating a weaker console than the PS4 that was then remedied with the Xbox One X.
Today, Xbox’s focus on having the most powerful console on the market continues. Despite the power difference being negligible, Xbox marketed the Series X on being the most powerful console ever, and even the console maker’s next main console is being teased as a machine that will deliver the “largest technical leap in a hardware generation”. However, as original Xbox creator Seamus Blackley claims, the “narrative” of having the most powerful console doesn’t really work any more.
The Father of Xbox on the pursuit of power
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the VideoGamer Podcast, Blackley explained that the marketing around being the most powerful machine available is becoming old-fashioned. The original Xbox was a powerhouse for its time, being the only console with a built-in hard drive, the only console capable of using pixel shaders, and the only console with the power to run games like Morrowind, KOTOR, Chronicles of Riddick and Halo.
Being the most powerful back then was important for a console arriving after the explosion of the PlayStation 2, because it worked.
“It was just that was a story that really worked and that was relevant then because we were still sort of the nascent stages of graphics,” Blackley explained. “Taking that hit in the cost of goods of the cogs was critical, both from the standpoint of story and positioning of us versus the other consoles that came from, you know, what was perceived as these giant Japanese hardware companies that were obviously producing these things for no costs and making all this profit off of them… we were a Western company and we were saying ‘okay, we’re going to lose money on these to make them super powerful’ and take a bet on the games being awesome.”
“How they managed that brand and the story going forward is not my f**king fault.”
SEAMUS BLACKLEY, CREATOR OF XBOX
Back in 2001, this was a story that just worked, but as games have massively evolved and graphics differences between flagship consoles—such as PS5 and Series S—is now negligible, that continued focus on power is not necessarily worth chasing.
“[Being the most powerful] was also important to get the guys going into the future,” Blackley explained. “And then, you know, how they managed that brand and the story going forward is not my f**king fault, and it’s not, you know, I would not have done things the same way I don’t know if it would have been more or less successful but I certainly think that this narrative around being more powerful is not helpful today.”
The Battle for Content
For Blackley, the reason to buy a console is still the same as its ever been. It’s not about the most power, the highest resolution games or the fidelity of ray-traced gubbins, it’s about the content available to players on that machine. Before, it was about what the content could do, now it’s about what the content is.
“I remember seeing, like, Gran Turismo, when it came out for PlayStation, and I had to buy it just because I couldn’t believe what was happening on the screen was happening on the screen right and that was compelling and that doesn’t exist any more,” Blackley said. “Like there’s there is no more graphics that make you feel that way.
And now, the battle for content has switched away from that sort of technical achievement into other things, and I think that if you want to win you have to find those other things that they’re compelling to people right you have to create an experience where people when they see it they have to have it. Because what you’re really doing is you’re sort of like trying to suck a huge grape through a straw you’re, you’re trying to get them to spend several hundred dollars to buy a games console in order to play a $70 game.”
For Blackley, the proof is in the pudding. As a lifelong gamer, the Xbox creator thinks back to his Nintendo Switch, a 2017 handheld powered by underclocked 2013 hardware that simply has the content it needs to not only survive, but become one of the best selling consoles of all time.
“That’s all you need,” he explained. “I have played through Breath of the Wild maybe three or four times. I’ll just keep playing through it and I can carry it with me. I can have it on a plane [if] I have a long plane flight, or Skyrim on Switch. Skyrim on Switch? I can blow six hours in Skyrim, no problem.”
In the 24 years since the original Xbox shook the world, the console landscape has changed. We’re now looking past rasterised performance towards machine-learned upscaling, some are even looking away from local computing into cloud gaming, a future Blackley is not so fond of. At the end of the day, the future is always uncertain, but with generation leaps turning into generational skips, maybe the focus on power is misguided.
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