Things have truly changed in the world of gaming since 2013, when the most recent generation of consoles were announced. Streaming was just breaking onto the scene, many famous gamers had barely stepped into the world, and gaming itself was not taken as seriously as it is now.
Video games are now more widely recognized as a mainstream sporting-type competition. However, that does not mean that the companies that create these consoles are free from critique. Microsoft, with the Xbox One, should know that. With the impending release of the Xbox Series X, one should consider the false promises that were made for the previous consoles before they get too invested in the hype surrounding this new device.
10 Motion Control 2.0
Instead of kicking motion control to the curb like Sony did at the start of the PS4, Microsoft doubled downed on the project. They integrated the Kinect 2.0 with the very infrastructure of the Xbox One.
They promised a motion controlled future, but in 2014, exactly a year after they debuted the system, they introduced an Xbox One bundle without the Kinect. From there support quickly fell off.
9 HoloLens
While the rest of the world was concerned with VR, Microsoft started exploring Augmented Reality, or as they coined it, Mixed Reality. The project that utilized this feature was HoloLens which was demoed onstage at E3 2015.
Needless to say it was an impressive display, but it never returned to their E3 presentations. That said it was being developed behind the scenes. There is even a HoloLens 2, which can even be purchased, but in terms of creating something for Xbox One, well, that didn’t really happen.
8 VR Support
It’s not like Microsoft was crazy enough to ignore VR completely. They made a deal with the Oculus Rift, allowing for Xbox One games to be streamed to the platform.
When the Xbox One X was unveiled at E3 2016 as Project Scorpio, Phil Spencer had this to say, “This is hardware built specifically to lead the console industry into true 4K gaming and high-fidelity VR.” Needless VR support never happened for the Xbox One X.
7 Cloud Based Gaming
One of the promises of creating an “Always On” environment for the Xbox One was that it would utilize the Cloud. This wasn’t just for creating save data either. There were plans to house game environments with the Cloud so that they could be destructible, living worlds, which would be shared across multiple users.
This was demonstrated with Crackdown 3. Since the constant online functionality was abandoned almost immediately, this feature never saw the light of day.
6 AAA Exclusives
As is the case with most console creators, Microsoft promised to deliver AAA quality exclusives. Try as they might, they could never quite reach the heights of the PS4’s library. Games either felt rushed, like ReCore, or promising titles, like Scalebound, were abandoned.
There were a lot of cancelations of projects, backpedaling of ideas, and even closings of studios. It was a rough few years for the Xbox One, which took a while to recover.
5 Multiple Online Matches
In the reveal for the system, it was said that players could cue up a match in one game, transfer over to another and play until they got a notification when said match was ready. This was demonstrated with quickness and ease.
Unfortunately that didn’t really happen, at least in the capacity promised at the reveal event. Along with this, Snap Mode was eventually abandoned in 2017.
4 TV Shows
Before Disney+ and every company wanted to create their own platform akin to Netflix, Microsoft promised to create exclusive shows for the system.
The first was Quantum Break which instead eventually became integrated into the game itself in 2016, which for reference, was three years after this initial reveal. Another project that never met the light of day was a Steven Spielberg Halo project. The Microsoft TV division was quickly abandoned.
3 PC To Xbox One Support
At E3 2016, Microsoft unveiled Xbox Play Anywhere. This was a program that allowed users to play and transfer data between Xbox One and the PC. It was like the PS4’s Remote Play except one was actually able to download the game on PC.
While this was good news for PC players, it never worked the other way around. Imagine if Steam could have been used on the Xbox One.
2 FastStart
FastStart was confusingly talked about at E3 2018. It was a feature that promised to start games faster by learning off of user data. Since then Microsoft has added this onto a list of games.
It’s supposed to start games faster, but it doesn’t seem to work as good as intended. Again, the reveal and rollout left most gamers stumped.
1 Predictive Downloading
Another odd feature that was promised around the reveal was the Xbox One predictively downloading games for players.
Luckily, this idea was abandoned as many gamers did not like the idea of their console pushing unwanted games on them and downloading them without permission.