Despite doing a lot of looking ahead lately on the hardware front, Xbox is more committed to its past consoles than you might think. Not just to the Xbox One, but even to the console that came before it, the Xbox 360, which just received an update out of the blue, or maybe that should be out of the green.
The Xbox 360 will turn 20 this year – I know, try not to think about it too much. Still, the peak of Xbox’s hardware success two generations later, and apparently still a console that’s being used by enough people that Xbox believes it’s worth updating its software. An update for the 20-year-old console was rolled out this week, and those who noticed it go live have been trying to figure out what it does.
Sharing their findings on the Xbox 360 subreddit, most of the changes appear to be cosmetic ones to the console’s dashboard. Still the image that springs to mind when I hear the words Xbox and dashboard in the same sentence, its thumbnail images have been improved so they no longer appear stretched. Others have pointed to ads for the Xbox Series X|S now being front and center.
Go Turn On Your Xbox 360, There’s An Update Waiting
What Do You Mean It Isn’t Hooked Up And Ready To Go?
I’m not sure why, but something about seeing a Series X in a 360 dashboard doesn’t sit right with me. It ain’t natural.
Until this surprise update, the most recent console being advertised on the 360’s dashboard was the Xbox One S, which itself is almost a decade old. Why it has chosen now to roll out an update is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Series X|S sales have slowed down enough that Xbox is now thinking outside the box when it comes to who it should target next. You never know, there might be someone out there still using their 360 who is finally convinced to join the current gen when shown Xbox’s newest console on their 20-year-old 360.
It might seem wild to those of us who have been playing the latest consoles for five years and already have half an eye on what will replace them, but after selling 84 million of them, there are people out there still using their 360s. How quickly this week’s update was spotted and celebrated is evidence of that.
Xbox mentioned what’s next on the hardware front recently, noting that its next console won’t be bound to a single storefront. There’s also the Xbox ROG Ally launching later this year, with some fearful that the more powerful version of the handheld could cost $1,000.
- Brand
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Microsoft
- Original Release Date
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November 22, 2005
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$299, £209, €299
- Operating System
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Proprietary, Windows-based
- Processor
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3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon
- Resolution
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480i – 1080p