The Best (And Worst) Xbox 360 Moments

In 2024 it’s easy to forget that including a wireless controller in the box at launch was a big deal. But back when the console launched, it was a very cool and innovative idea. Even better, the Xbox 360 controller was an incredible gamepad that would go on to reshape other controllers and become the dominant PC gaming accessory for years to come.

Any retrospective about the Xbox 360 has to mention this part of the console’s history. For the first few years of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle, the console was prone to hardware failure due to overheating. I personally had to buy four Xbox 360s over the years and send one back to Microsoft for repairs due to all the hardware issues. While the Xbox 360 was a big success despite these problems, I wonder how much better it would have done if the Red Ring of Death hadn’t been a problem and made people question investing in a new Xbox.

While the Xbox 360’s launch titles weren’t great (more on that in a moment) it would eventually make up for those games with some generation-defining bangers, like Bungie’s 2007 classic, Halo 3. It’s hard to explain just how big Halo 3 was in 2007. It was the game everyone I knew was playing. It was all over the news.

A few months later, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare would arrive and begin chipping away at Halo’s dominance on the console, but for a few years there before CoD took over, Halo 3 was the biggest and coolest FPS on the planet.

Today, when you log into a modern console and go to buy some DLC or a tiny indie game, you just use real money via your credit card or debit card. Simple enough. But for a long time during the Xbox 360’s run, the console used Microsoft Points, a virtual currency created by Xbox. This was already annoying enough, but what made matters worse was that the conversion for dollars to Microsoft Points was needlessly complicated. 80 points cost $1 USD. So doing the math for purchases was a pain. Luckily, this all went away in 2013.

The Xbox 360 wasn’t the first console to offer digital games to players, but it was the first to really embrace the concept and support it long-term. Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox 360 was a great example of this. Microsoft curated a select number of games that could be sold digitally at relatively cheap prices. These games, like Castle Crashers, Bastion, Trials HD, and Shadow Complex, offered great experiences that didn’t take up much space on the hard drive. And all Xbox Live Arcade games had to offer a demo or trial version for free, too.

Even better, for a few years, Microsoft ran a yearly “Summer of Arcade” promotion where a few select games would be spotlighted. These Summer of Arcade events produced a ton of great titles and got my buddies and me excited to check out smaller games we might have skipped over otherwise. Of all the things we lost from this era, this level of curation might be the biggest and most frustrating loss.

By the end of its life, the Xbox 360 had developed one of the best video game libraries around. But it sure didn’t start that way. The Xbox 360 might have one of the most mediocre video game console launch lineups in history. It’s not completely awful—with some good games like Condemned: Criminal Origins and Call of Duty 2—but much of its launch offerings included sports games that quickly became irrelevant, cross-gen ports that didn’t feel next-gen, and stuff like Perfect Dark: Zero and Quake 4.

Streaming movies and TV shows instantly on your TV was still a fairly new and novel idea when the Xbox 360 arrived. And one of the coolest ways to stream stuff back then was via Netflix Viewing Parties on Xbox 360.

You and a few friends could group up, pick a movie or show, and then watch it together in a virtual theater. Your Xbox Live avatar could emote throughout the movie and even better, the host of the party could pause, rewind, and fast forward and it would sync with everyone else. I watched a lot of Lost, X-Files, and bad comedies this way. It’s always weird to me that Microsoft has never tried to bring back this cool feature, especially as the pandemic made watch parties over Discord more popular than ever.

Yes, yes, I know about the theories that Microsoft didn’t want to support Blu-ray because Sony was involved with the format. So instead, Xbox 360 used DVDs, like the PS2 and OG Xbox. (It was also cheaper to produce a DVD-powered console compared to Blu-ray.)

Later Microsoft offered an HD DVD player attachment. That format never took off and Sony’s decision to include Blu-ray support in the PS3 was the right call. As the generation went on, it became wild how many big Xbox 360 games shipped on two, three, or even four DVDs while PS3 games rarely exceeded one Blu-ray. When the Xbox One arrived, Microsoft learned its lesson and supported Blu-ray.

Before the Xbox 360, consoles didn’t track what games you played beyond whatever saves you created while playing stuff. But with the Xbox 360, Microsoft invented a whole new concept: Video game achievements. The idea was that every game on Xbox 360 would offer a series of challenges that could be completed for points and that the console would track all of this. I was one of the many people who spent a lot of time grinding for those achievements.

There was something so cool about a game rewarding you for doing something really hard, weird, or surprising while you played it. And being able to look back at your video game accomplishments and history years later was also rad. 360’s achievements were such a popular and smart concept that basically everybody else—including Sony and Valve—copied the system and it’s still around today.

The OG Xbox locked multiplayer behind a paywall, something that people criticized at the time. When the Xbox 360 rolled around, some wondered if Microsoft would back down on its multiplayer paywall. It didn’t! Xbox Live Game Pass Core (previously known as Gold) was a part of the Xbox 360 for its entire lifespan and it sucked.

Sure, some argued it meant Xbox invested more in its online services, but as someone who grew up playing PC games like Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike online for free, having to pay always felt wrong. Meanwhile, on PS3, Sony didn’t charge folks to play online. (Though that changed with the PS4.) Oh and until 2014, you had to have Xbox Live Gold to even use Netlifx and Hulu.

Okay, yes, having to pay for Xbox Live Gold to watch Netflix and play Halo 3 sucked. But Xbox did begin to offer players free games in 2013 on Xbox 360 if they were Gold members. Each month players would get two free games. Even better, these games were free forever. Even if you stopped paying for Gold, you could play the free games given to you.

Today, both Xbox and PlayStation offer free games, but it’s all convoluted and you have to be a member to play anything you collect. But back during the Xbox 360 things were simpler and better with Games With Gold.

Sure Kinect was dumb, the Facebook app on Xbox 360 sucked, and hard drives for the console were overly expensive. But worse than all of that is the recent closing of the Xbox 360’s digital store.

So many games, demos, and paid expansions are now legally impossible to purchase and play. As video game companies and consoles become more and more digital, the Xbox 360 store closing is a grim reminder that these digital goods are only useful and accessible for as long as the corporations in charge feel like. And once they decide to move on, history is lost and consumers’ faith in digital stores is shaken.