I’ve been wanting to get a new BluRay player for the past few months, and as such, have spent an inordinate about of time doing research (as I always do before buying something expensive). This led me down all sorts of thought alleys, which all sort of ended in the thinking that just a BluRay player was a bit of a waste, and for just a little more, or in some cases, a little less, I could pickup a console, which would then allow me to play more games in the living room, as well as films. I was umming and ahing about what console to get then, and spent even longer looking through countless eBay listing for good deals on a PlayStation or XBox. I thought that perhaps either a PS3, a PS4, or an Xbox One X would suit, disregarding the Series X as it seems to be ever increasing in price, and there are other considerations too, so I thought I may as well have my money go to some random person on the internet instead.
I eventually settled on the Xbox One X, finding a decent condition Scorpio edition for around £160 in box (although later eBay kindly notified me of a better condition one for £60 less about a week later, cheers eBay). After a surprisingly brief wait, and a concerning image from the Royal Mail stating that they had delivered it exactly where I had requested they not deliver it, I was in the possession of yet another means of gaming - hurrah.
I wasn’t particularly drawn to this version for any reason, but the fact that it reminds me of Hank Scorpio every time I look at it pleases me greatly.
Other than an old Simpsons reference, what excited me most about the console was the vast backwards compatibility library, with almost 700 titles covering the original XBox and the 360, which covers a good variety of games, although there are some glaring omissions, which is a shame. This number is still well beyond what Microsoft needed to do (although more would be appreciated), and is far better than having to subscribe for them, or whatever, although I wouldn’t put that past any company in the future - Nintendo do it, but it’s harder to plug a SNES cartridge into a Switch than it is to put a disc in a disc drive… although finding a disc drive will soon be a problem. This all means that visiting a CEX has become more useful endeavour once again, as my aisles to browse were somewhat limited, and my latest visit yielded this nice find for the Metal Gear Solid collection, never having acquired the HD version the first time around.
The Steam Deck was my most recent purchase of a gaming device a couple of years ago, and apart from a PSOne I purchased for a Secret Santa gift, and the Switch for my wife, the previous most recent console was probably the WiiU, and that was a VERY long time ago! So the excitement of getting a new piece of tech hooked up to the telly, even if it was released in 2017 (and came with a Nintendo HDMI lead and a Sky box power cable…), was great, and it still gave me a taste of that childlike joy, and after installing the BluRay player and all the 360 games I had to hand, as well as a few new Xbox One titles, I got to playing, and also planning a raid of the parent’s attic to fully stock the thing with old treasures.
For an almost eight year piece of tech, it still feels remarkably up to date, it’s responsive, and well featured, and for the amount I’ll use it (likely one film a week and a few odd hours of gaming here and there), it’s more than adequate, and being able to play certain older titles without the effort of setting up emulating, especially the 360 era games, it’s a godsend, especially for the likes of Crackdown and Fable 2, neither of which I’ve had any luck in getting to work otherwise. It’s hard to predict what the console space will be like in the future, but as each year goes by, I find myself getting ever more resistant to subscriptions and digital only platforms. The benefits are undeniable, but so are the downsides. The Xbox One X is probably worthless without the internet and without the servers that service the console, it’s almost certainly beyond useless, but at least in home console mode, and with games preinstalled, it’s at least somewhat shielded from that pesky consideration. Second hand console purchases are often risky besides their viability in the future, all the more with internet integrated ones, so it’s hard to tell if I’ve been duped in more than one way just yet, but all seems good so far, so fingers crossed it won’t become a paperweight too soon. And if one day Microsoft sever the connection, I’m sure there will be someone on a forum somewhere with a cheeky fix… Continuing with my delusions, ideally I’d have all my old consoles hooked up and I’d be making use of the original games on their original hardware, but even when I had access to them, having them all ready to go was beyond my means - my SCART switcher did its duty, but the MFI TV unit I had back then could only bear so much, and besides, there is only so much time in the day. For now, with this, along with my PC and my Steam Deck, I’m pretty well served.
What consoles do you have? Do you keep lots hooked up at once or do you just stick with one? And if you have an Xbox One X, let me know what you think, and if you’ve done anything exciting with it, such as installing emulators for other platforms. I’ve been through all that with the Steam Deck, so I’m not quite ready to do that all over again just yet... Sooner rather than later though, I’m sure.
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One of the few times Microsoft got one over on Sony last generation. The One X was sleek, fast and powerful, the PS4 Pro was a big, noisy liquorice allsort