Lattepunk 360
Lattepunk
Apparently, reader, you are an Xbox. That's cool! Right?
From 2006 to 2013, the Xbox 360 was the king of the living room. Today, in 2025, it seems the battle of dominating the living room isn't important. Xbox wants to be everywhere and anywhere you are, regardless if they made the hardware or not. Look at this ad campaign from late last year:

Microsoft doesn't care about being the best console anymore. They want to be where ever people are willing to give them money on. During the Xbox 360 days, you were missing out if you were gaming on another console. Xbox Live paved the way for how console gaming should do online features correctly. I still look back fondly on the days I would destroy my friends in Bomberman Live and getting invited into the beta of some new game that Microsoft themselves might find value in.
November 7th, 2006. That day is very memorable to me. This new game came out and it was like nothing I ever played before. Gears of War. I shit you not reader, this game changed my life. For the better? Of course not! I spent so many hours playing this game. At one point I made it in the top 2000 players in the world on the weekly standings (I tried my hardest to find any proof of this. I couldn't find any of the leaderboards for this game. You're going to have to take my word for this.) Obviously, to reach that requires a heavy time investment. Gears of War is the reason I dropped out community college. The first time...
So what happened?
This is a VentureBeat article from 2013, right after the Xbox One got announced. This is from one of the first paragraphs:
Microsoft has received such negative backlash from the reveal event that the question of whether or not they have just completely screwed up the next generation for itself is becoming more prominent.
That was what happened. They completely dropped the ball on the Xbox One release. They had this insane game borrowing "feature" that was so bad it got reversed. Sony took advantage of Microsoft's fumble with a sick ad:
Let's go back a bit further, do you remember September 25, 2007? That was a Tuesday. Wednesday morning, the girl that sat in front of me during my photography class turned around and looked me straight in my eyes. With grave concern on her face, she says "Your eyes are bloodshot, are you okay?" I looked into her beautiful eyes and muttered two words: Halo 3.
If you bought a Nintendo for Mario, you bought an Xbox for Master Chief. This game defined first person shooter games for consoles. Hours of my life spent getting Double Kills, capturing flags in Valhalla, jacking Banshees out of the air. Friendships were made and lost agonizing over each others kill/death ratios. Who to blame when we lost, what clutch play won us the round. Plasma Swords and Gravity Hammers! Reader, this is the reason I dropped out of community college the second time! Crazy this game almost belonged to Apple.
It wasn't just the game sharing debacle. It was a lack of good launch titles and other annoyances that led the Xbox One down the wrong path. Sony hasn't lost the living room since. Microsoft knows this too. That game that made me drop out of college the first time? They're remaking it. And you can play it on the PlayStation 5. Exclusives be damned! Loyal fans aren't rewarded with the big Xbox branded games anymore. You can play them anywhere, cause everything is an Xbox! Would they do this to THE Xbox game? Why buy an Xbox then?
If not the living room, where?
Nintendo is the king of on the go gaming. This is easily noticeable now during the Switch era we live in, but don't forget the Game Boy era that many AA batteries sacarficed their lives for. That lead to a prominent PC storefront to make and release their own handheld gaming console. And then that lead to even more PC gaming handhelds cause laptop makers can't just not make money. Surely, seeing such a complex market dominated by two big names with an established lead would deter a certian Xbox from entering that market right? Reader, feast your eyes on this:

Yep, an Xbox themed PC handheld console. Not made by Microsoft, just themed. Which seems to be a... theme. Microsoft just seems happy to have their Xbox name just be everywhere. Since hardware doesn't matter, they are looking to compete in the software. Here's an article from ArsTechnica about the new Xbox UI they seem to be working on. Here's a bit from the article:
Microsoft has been slow to respond to SteamOS and the Steam Deck. At first, it wasn't clear whether the clunky and rough-around-the-edges handheld would succeed at all; these handhelds also don't represent a significant threat to traditional gaming PCs, which are considerably more powerful. Microsoft has also spent most of the last two years focused on AI—and arguably security—at the expense of other big swings.
Giving up on selling you hardware, that would mean that Xbox is going to ramp it up and start making games that are worth playing again. Seems like the plan, right?
Microsoft announced what!?
Let's play a game, reader. Do you think Microsoft announced:
A: A new gaming console to push the Xbox brand into the future
OR
B: A layoff of 9000 employees with less than half being in the Xbox divison
If you guessed B, you are spot on! Besides this sucking for all the humans losing their jobs, it sucks for fans of Xbox games. Did you, like me, like racing around tracks in Forza Motorsport? Gone. Were you, like me, excited for the Perfect Dark reboot coming up? Gone. Would you, like me, get excited about a game that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer enjoyed so much he had to have the controller pulled out of his hand? GONE! Hell, an unrelated to Microsoft game by the creator of fucking DOOM got cancelled. With so many people affected, Microsoft leadership is obviously sympathetic to everyone involved. They wouldn't come out and recommend ChatGPT prompts to help you with job loss. It's like Microsoft just likes to fail exactly when you don't want them to.
Personally, this is just deja vu for me. Let me take you down memory lane one more time, 2010. May 3rd to be specific. That was when the Halo: Reach beta came out. I wasn't in community college anymore, I'd like to think I was a responsible adult by then. I managed to install the beta on my Xbox 360 and played one game. I remember it being different than the Halo 3 I loved, but it's just one game. I had work in the morning, but after that, it's pizza and Halo: Reach until I got used to the changes and fell in love with the game as I knew I eventually would.
After working a full day on May 4th, I raced my way home. When I turned on my Xbox, I was heartbroken to see this:

Yep! My Xbox had just had a general hardware failure. I was never able to fix it. To this day, I never played Halo: Reach more than that one match. That's when I gave up on Xbox hardware. It's good to know Microsoft did too.
things i read
How to Disappear: Secrets of the World’s Greatest Privacy Experts | Benjamin Wallace for The Atlantic
He’s Blind. He Plays Video Games. Here’s How That Works | Dexter Thomas for WIRED
She was a Disney star with platinum records, but Bridgit Mendler gave it up to change the world | Eric Berger for ArsTechnica
How I Learned to Become an Intimacy Coördinator | Jennifer Wilson for The New Yorker
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling. | Kashmir Hill for NY Times
The Definitive, Insane, Swimsuit-Bursting Story of the Steroid Olympics | Amit Katwala for WIRED
This New Watch Is Being Purpose-Built for Space Exploration—and It's Not an Omega | Chris Hall for WIRED
How Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans | Cezary Podkul for ProPublica
My Couples Retreat With 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them | Sam Apple for WIRED
What’s wrong with AAA games? The development of the next Battlefield has answers. | Samual Axon for ArsTechnica
This is not a tattoo robot | Mach DeGeurin for The Verge
Thanks to Zillow, Your Friends Know How Much Your House Costs—or if You’re Secretly Rich | Elana Klein for WIRED
Dangerous mines: A death at the bottom of the EV supply chain | Tawanda Karombo, Kimberly Mutandiro for Rest of World
McDonald’s AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants’ Data to Hackers Who Tried the Password ‘123456’ | Andy Greenberg for WIRED
Inside Brembo’s brake factory, where technology is making better brakes | ArsTechnica Staff
The wild plots of Iranian dissident hunters | Fariba Nawa for The Verge
If you want to play some daily puzzles, join my Puzzmo club. I've been slacking on my crosswords but I've been on the Sudoku.
Is Xbox actually the best? You're wrong, but I'd like to hear why you're wrong. Let me know at blog@lattepunk.com.
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