Nowadays, as Xbox continues to fumble and bumble its way through the industry like a heavy drinker on Friday night, people have begun retrospecting on the brand’s glorious past. There was, after all, a time when it was quite ahead of its competitors.
Among the many who look back to the past, trying to figure out what went wrong, some have started to suggest that the organization may never have been sober to begin with, considering its history with Rockstar and other massive studios.
Xbox Once Turned down Rockstar, Insomniac, and MiHoYo for Their Greatest Titles
There was once a time when Xbox became the dominant force within the gaming industry. With an AR in hand, Master Chief singlehandedly took the original console into the stratosphere. What followed was the organization at its most competitive, releasing one good title after another and directly pushing back against PlayStation 2’s stronghold on gaming.
Among the developers too, it slowly became their preferred choice of platform for releasing their games; part of that may also have to do with the console’s easier architecture that allowed developers to port or develop for multiple platforms.
That brings us to Rockstar—a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed team of developers who, coming straight off the heels of GTA 2 and after being rejected by Xbox, released GTA 3, a groundbreaking open-world game that set a new standard for the gaming industry.
This has to be the biggest miss in all of gaming, and one would think that after this, Xbox will try not to keep repeating the same mistake like a broken record. Here’s where you’d be wrong, though.
Unsurprisingly, even after this, it would go on to turn down Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, the greatest superhero title that now stands right alongside the Arkham Trilogy, and MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact, a billion-dollar juggernaut of a video game.
Xbox’s List of Fumbles Is a Little Bigger Than Just Those Three Juggernaut Publishers
Here’s the thing: forget learning from one’s mistake; it seems as though Xbox never even understood what it did in the first place. Not only did it miss out on three of history’s biggest video games, but it also missed some of the greatest titles of all time.
To add to the list, Xbox refused both exclusivity and development support for games like Resident Evil 4, Alan Wake II, and Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s two of the biggest titles from last year and arguably the greatest and most innovative game of all time.
Despite how hilarious some of this stuff may be, it’s deeply saddening too. As the organization continues to clamor for exclusives and “blockbuster titles,” it’s a shame knowing that they had it all and decided to throw it away out of ignorance. Now, seeing them struggle and make one bad decision after another while negatively impacting the industry as a whole, one can only think of what could’ve been, wistfully so.
With that said, what are your thoughts on Xbox’s past misses? Do you think that these misses could’ve prevented their present state? Let us know in the comments below.
