Xbox One's Biggest Gaming Achievements | Screen Rant
The Xbox One generation is coming to an end, which means it's time to take back on the generation's biggest achievements, especially Xbox Game Pass.
The Xbox One generation has a lot of gaming achievements to celebrate (pun intended), especially as it nears the end of its lifecycle. Although it wasn't well-received at first and quickly lost ground to Sony's PlayStation 4, Microsoft stuck to their guns and never gave up on the Xbox One, no matter how dire things seemed.
Now, after seven years with the Xbox One and its various iterations, including the One X and One S, Microsoft truly has something to be proud of with its last console. While the Xbox One never got groundbreaking first-party games like God of War or The Last Of Us Part II, Microsoft became an innovator within the industry over the past seven years, especially because of its focus on technology and an interconnected Microsoft ecosystem.
Now that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles are here to stay, here's a ranked list of the three biggest achievements from the Xbox One generation.
In terms of power, the original Xbox One was a bit weaker than the original PlayStation 4, which Microsoft tried to fix with the release of the Xbox One S. However, the company wasn't truly successful in its campaign to overtake the PS4 until the launch of the Xbox One X in 2017. The Xbox One X was a graphical powerhouse compared to previous iterations of the One and even the PS4 Pro, which had been released a year prior in November 2016. For example, the PS4 Pro had 4.2 teraflops whereas the Xbox One X had 6.0. Of course, teraflops don't always tell the whole story, but it is generally a good indicator of GPU power levels.
Another good indicator of how well a piece of tech runs is the RAM. The PS4 Pro was significantly faster than the original Xbox One and the Xbox One S, even though all three consoles had 8GB of RAM, since it used 8GB DDR5 memory in comparison to Xbox's 8GB DDR3. This all went out the window when Microsoft introduced the Xbox One X, which had 12GB of RAM and allowed game developers access to 9GB for games, helping immensely with native 4K gaming. With these improvements, the Xbox solidified itself as, definitively, the most powerful place to play console games, an enormous achievement for a platform that was struggling to keep up with the competition at the start of its lifecycle in 2013.
The power of the console itself isn't the only technological success Microsoft had with the One, either. The Xbox One saw the introduction of the Elite Series controllers, the first of which launched all the way back in 2015. Marketed as "the world's most advanced controller," the Elite Series truly lives up to its name.
The Elite Series keeps the core layout of the Xbox One's controller (which kept the core layout of the 360's), but focuses on comfort for better gameplay. It's designed with soft plastic, rubber grips, and a fancy control pad that makes life easier no matter what genre of game is being played. Additionally, gamers can swap out thumbsticks depending on need or comfort, allowing players focused on competitive gaming to install longer sticks that help with aiming accuracy.
The biggest downside with the first version of the Elite Series was its durability - many folks reported issues with the battery life, thumbsticks locking up, and even the thumbsticks coming loose during gameplay. Luckily, the Elite Series 2 fixed most of these problems, giving Xbox gamers an expensive, advanced controller that's worth the money.
Of course, the biggest innovation Microsoft had with the Xbox One generation is simple: Game Pass. Nearly everyone loves Game Pass, and for good reason. It's the best deal in gaming and has revolutionized how people play and interact with their games. For years now, the idea of "a Netflix for video games" has been thrown around, but no one ever figured out a way to pull it off successfully until Game Pass launched in 2017.
At the end of 2020, Xbox Game Pass isn't just available on Xbox One, but PC and Xbox Series X|S as well, not to mention the current and future plans Microsoft has with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which will allow people to play their Xbox games on the go with mobile phones. Microsoft's goal and strategy with Game Pass wasn't just to let consumers play more games, but to build an ecosystem that makes it easy to switch back and forth between platforms as long as it belongs to Microsoft.
Microsoft keeps finding ways to sweeten the deal, too. Originally, the $10 a month subscription was only available for Xbox One users, until the company announced that Xbox Game Pass was coming to Windows 10 PCs in early 2019. Now, with the introduction of Game Pass Ultimate, it feels like there's nothing that Microsoft can't pull off.
Gamers can have Game Pass for Xbox (whether it's a One or a new Series X|S) and PC, all for $15, which includes over 100 games and Xbox Live Gold. It's not just new games, either, and players can travel back in time to the original Xbox or Xbox 360 to visit their favorite classics with a simple click and a download. It's honestly impressive what Microsoft has been able to do with Game Pass throughout the Xbox One's lifecycle, especially considering it's only been around for the last three years.
This isn't all to say that the Xbox One hasn't had exciting games all on its own. The Xbox One also saw the introduction of Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, two phenomenal platformers that are a great addition to the family of Xbox originals. Plus, it added sequels to already-great franchises with Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4.
However, when looking back on how the Xbox One generation impacted gaming, there's no doubt that it'll be for the technological advancements it made as a computing powerhouse and the introduction of the Elite Series controllers, as well as Game Pass, which is arguably the biggest innovation in gaming in the past decade. Microsoft may have been "behind" Sony this generation in terms of first-party games, but there's no question that the goodwill the company's built up with its audience is an enormous achievement all on its own.