Xbox Series X: 4 Ups & 4 Downs After 4 Months

3. More Of The Same

For as much as Xbox slowly removed every poisonous part of their early eighth generation identity, we've ostensibly had the same UI and approach to gaming for a decade now.

Starting with aesthetics, 2011's "Metro" update on Xbox 360 went even further away from the Blades dashboard we knew and loved, as the "New Xbox Experience"'s cascading set of tiles was replaced with the "Windows Phone" look that's remained ever since.

It was the beginning of Xbox "chasing the living room" with the Kinect, and as all of that had to be reworked, apparently there was no room left for exclusives or meaningful reasons to invest in the system, other than the brand itself.

2013-2020 was almost totally devoid of exclusives worth buying the system for, save for Forza Horizon 4 and the Ori games, as Xbox devoted everything to the Game Pass and backwards compatibility-fronted marketing blitz we're still enjoying today.

Still, though the Series X will run your library best, an Xbox One X can mostly scratch that itch anyway. All Xbox exclusives other than The Medium have been released on last-gen so far, and that brings me onto the next point.