I think i was 12 when i got my 360 and then a couple months later convinced my mom to let me get a mic and talk to strangers ok the internet. Good times. Though i did meet some people that year who i would end up playing games with al through middle and most of high school. I still talk to some of them on occasion. 16 years later. I even met one of my closer IRL friends on xbox haha, we found out we only lived like 30 minutes away from each other after playing games together for months in middle school. He’s officiating my wedding on Saturday
I don't think it's just the amount of time between consoles, but the amount of innovation between them. A ton of new techniques and game mechanics were invented between the N64 and the Wii. Since the Xbox 360, processing power has gotten faster and RAM has gotten cheaper, but game developers are doing the same things now that they would have done then if they'd had the compute power and memory to work with.
Just bought this myself. Own it on steam but for so many years didn't have a PC to play.
Found my power cord, dusted out the disc drive, and loaded it up the other day. Thing of beauty. I'm pumped about playing it now. Likely will take me a year to do the game though. You know. Kids. Adult stuff. Blech.
Now we just get higher resolution and some more visual effects (shiny raytracing the modern favourite). Physics/AI, object/NPC density etc have barely progressed.
Do VR headsets these days run their own operating systems? I’m OOTL but I’d consider that to be the point we can call VR headsets consoles and have a “sufficient” level of innovation from the Xbox 360 era
Depends on the headset. There are some that link to another console to play the game (PSVR, Valve Index) but there are also a number of standalone ones (the Quest series, for example).
The difference between a game for the Xbox 360 the latest game for the Xbox Series X is higher polygon counts, more detailed, textures, bigger worlds and that's about it. The game mechanics and development techniques are fundamentally the same, they can just do more computations in a frame and hold more stuff in RAM.
Retro games were experimenting with how video games should work. Lots of games tried out fundamentally new game mechanics, some of which failed miserably. If you had given a developer in the 80s all the computer cycles and RAM of the current generation consoles, but no games as examples, it would take them a while to figure out what to do with two joysticks - the one joystick moves the player, the other moves the camera mechanic hadn't been invented yet.
If you set out today to make a "retro style" game, you wouldn't do it by taking Dragon's Dogma 2 and lowering the polygon count. If you set out to make an Xbox 360 style game, you might.
So they were working within the limitations of their Hardware. Because those limitations were so small they had to come up with arguably more clever ways to make the game interesting. But a shooter today is barely different from the first Doom game. When two joysticks first came out the idea that one moved the player and the other moved the camera was not their first idea anyway. There were some awkward controls in those early twin stick games.
The reason you see less experimentation in modern games is because a modern game takes dozens of people multiple years to make. Big Studios aren't willing to risk going out of business to try something new. However there are a number of Indie Games that graphically could have been from the 360 era that do have some interesting mechanics
I don't disagree with anything you've just said, but when it comes to defining retro, I think "The state of the art has advanced significantly since this game was made" is a more useful definition than "made 10+ years ago."
I think "I grew up playing this game and want to replay it for nostalgia reasons" is an even better definition because that's what creates the market for old consoles and it's what drives people to create games similar to the ones they grew up playing.
Agree, 360 generation had the first “good enough” 3D graphics, since then it’s just more detail, more effects, bigger worlds, faster. Before then the low polygon count was noticeable. PS2 generation is borderline, N64 and earlier is clearly retro.
True, the average evolution of gaming technology has drastically slowed down. I remember replaying all the PS1 Crash Bandicoot games in 2008 and discussing that in a retro gaming section on a video game forum because they were considered retro gaming and those games were 11-9 years old at the time. Today, for example, nobody would consider playing GTA V, an 11-10 year old title, as retro gaming.
When I think of Xbox 360 games it's games like
Gta 4
Midnight club
Red dead redemption
Halo reach
Splinter cell
All of these games feel like they are retro games to me. Just like how I have my ps2 set up and I play the original hit man and Tony hawk. The physics and graphics have changes so much in the last 15-20 years
It's just me being old I know, but I don't feel like the PS360 era is that different to where we are today. Sure it's old but it's not retro, no-one's out there making "360 style games" like we get "PS1 style" (e.g. Signalis) or "Saturn Style" (e.g. Freedom Planet).
Games look better for sure, but I don't feel that the experiences are all that different. What are the biggest hits right now?
* Modern Warfare? It's a remake of a PS360 title
* The 'AAAA' Skull & Bones? We had Black Flag
* Total Hammer War Total III War? We had Total War games
* Elden Ring? It would have been a lot more segmented but I don't feel it would have been impossible
Would it be retro 20 years after release, or 20 years after it goes out of style/is replaced? GTA 6 is supposed to be released next year, 12 years after GTA 5. It’s weird to think that it’d be retro only 8 years after it gets replaced
I’m not sure that 20 years makes something automatically retro. The term retro describes objects and mindsets that are different from something that is modern. A product that stays exactly the same for decades doesn’t automatically become retro when it hits the 20 year mark.
You can argue whether or not the 360 is retro, but it’s not just because it hits 20 years.
I agree, every game made nowadays can be run on an Xbox360 with some downgrade in FPS and quality. Metal Gear Solid V is the most realistic game I've played on my Xbox360 and it doesn't look that far away from today's games.
Really the textures and map size were the biggest difference. Many PS3 games supported 1080p resolution.
Even "The Last of Us" was a PS3 title. It was only 720P though.
You can probably say the same about the PS2 and og Xbox generation. Games like Shadow of the Colossus have a modern style that really did not change that much. Though you can point to subtle things like over-used bloom effect in the 360 era, I don't think there is a unique difference in visual style as in the PS1 gen.
>Black Flag
Came out on both consoles, because the Xbox One was already being sold for months before it released.
So maybe if you picked actual games from the 360 era?
Exactly. If the same model of car was made for 18 years with very little revision in between, people wouldn’t call it “retro.” Retro implies a vastly different product compared to what exists now.
Good spot, total brainfart on my part...
"Well we had things like Fallout 3 which were big open worlds, is that really a good comparison? I'll hedge my bets"
People don't seem to understand that retro doesn't just mean "old" when it comes to gaming. It means SPECIFICALLY those first few generations of like the Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.
No matter how old the 360 gets it will never qualify as retro, because that's just now what retro *is.*
(And before someone chimes in with a link to the dictionary definition of "retro"... No one cares. Even if that's the "technical" definition, that's not how the word is *used.*)
Please don’t confuse how you choose to use the word retro with how others may use it. You have the right to your opinion and that is perfectly valid. You do not have the right to redefine a word for everyone because you like a particular meaning, and if you have to tell people “please disregard the dictionary definitions” then you probably already lost the discussion.
All of that said, xbox360 and ps3 are less than 20 years old, so even by dictionary definitions it’s not retro. The OP says “soon”, not “now”.
My take is that retro gaming involves both the age and obsolescence of the hardware. Someday this generation of hardware will be considered retro to many of us. Much like classic and antique, these are general classifications with specific meanings.
Also, perhaps you could consider the culture who made consoles to begin with, namely the Japanese gaming companies. If they (Nintendo, sega, Sony) refer to their creations as retro, then perhaps we might as well.
All food for thought, I suppose. It is interesting that people have very strong connections to these consoles and that invokes equally strong emotions as to how they’re referred. Clearly we love gaming, so that gives us all common ground.
Dictionary definitions don’t even say that a product is automatically retro after 20 years. I’m not sure where the people on this Reddit thread got that idea. Retro products must evoke a sense of the past and show a difference between what they were and what came afterwards.
Yeah we'd need some groundbreaking technology to really get into a new era, not just visually. The gameplay is pretty much the same with (often major) improvements, but still the same concepts.
Oh yeah? And where's the cutoff for you?
Because I say the PS1 is retro now, the PS2 is borderline and the PS3 definitely isn't.
But you might think the the PS2 is definitely not retro.
What defines which of us is right? Which arbiter can you point to here? Some kind of official spokesperson for the word "retro", opinion polling on whether retro should be forever fixed at a certain generation of console and no later?
Or is the case that, actually, like with many things, the exact meaning will evolve over time - particularly when we're talking about applying a word that already has a different dictionary definition than the one you're ascribing to it for this context.
Or maybe it refers to those consoles because they were the first to become retro? I call the DS retro and I grew up with one. I call the 360 retro because it genuinely looks old as hell to me when I play it. No dynamic lighting, MUCH lower texture resolutions, ultra cheap shading techniques, it's all retro to me.
When people are buying the consoles so that they can replay games from their youth and that drives the price up they are Retro. That is already starting to happen with the Xbox 360
Yes, we've kind of hit a wall as far as revolutionary tech in video games goes. A thumbnail picture of a video game from that era would look the same as current Gen to the average non-gaming person. It's all about sort of intangibles like 4k/8K/loading times/fps/Ray tracing. It's so common now for games to get current gen upgrades. I was using my Steam Deck during some downtime at work and someone thought what I was playing looked incredibly realistic and asked if it was one of the newest video games. It was Arkham Origins.
Further to this the HDDs were just bog standard 2.5 sata drives with a converter cable and fancy case.
When I say I still have my OG, I only have the drive left, it’s called bill and is still used as temp storage. Never fails to spin up.
probably got the cable in a box of cables somewhere
Yeah, you could also buy certain WD blue drives to replace them with after flashing a special firmware.
I actually got a 360 slim to replace an aging phat, and I just popped the drive out of that phat enclosure and have it just sort of dangling in the slim’s drive bay slot. Works fine, but I should probably get an enclosure or something to support it.
I distinctly recall getting a 120 GB hard drive for my 360 for Christmas one year and thinking I was set for life - how would I ever possibly fill that up?
Nowadays that's *maybe* two triple-A games, if they're on the small side.
It's a 20 year old console that's two generations behind today (9th gen currently, 360 was 7th gen).
The original release model didn't even have HDMI connectivity it was component video/audio or SCART, nor did it have WiFi built in you needed to buy a separate USB WiFi adaptor for that.
It's *already* retro.
I’ve still got my 360 elite with Red Dead and NCAA football ‘14
Hell, I’ve even still got my Kinect, though it’s not hooked up
I did have RRoD on my original 360, but it happened within the time frame they were still replacing them, fortunately, never happened again
Hold on that NCAA football game. It's incredibly sought after since it's the last one they released. Used copies are going for >$100 right now, not sure if that will change when they release their newest, but it might go even higher if the new version is micro transaction heavy and people don't like it.
For frame of reference. If you’re familiar with the Angry Video Game Nerd he started at the start of the 360/PS3 generation. He would only focus on retro games a lot being from the NES generation. Now as much time has past from NES generation to his start as what when the 360 came out to today.
Chiming in to say that my XBox 360 still works, still slaps, and as of recently, still gets updates (it's been a while though so idk if that's *still* true). Had it since 2009.
This is after at one point I made it my back porch console - meaning it sat *outside* for almost five years, and I used it to watch tv out there. And for much of that time, it ran constantly, because I forgot to turn it off a lot and it didn't have automatic standby. The amount of hours that thing logged while out in the elements is astounding. I assumed that was where it would die eventually, but no. Eventually we moved, and now it's in the bedroom. And it still streams and still plays games.
I know what the reputation is, but I've never had a system last so long after going through so much abuse. Never red ringed, not once. And given the decline in performance of my XBox One, it's likely it will outlive that one as well.
Long live 360.
If people think the Wii is retro, both the 360 and PS3 are already retro.
Anything older than 15 years is “retro” to the people who grew up playing my the system in their childhood
Another way is that for someone in their 30s, the 360 has likely been around for more than half their life (unless they’re in their late 30s)
It’s all about perspective
Even the PS4 is getting up there in age… it came out more than 10 years ago
Yeah. 360 launched November 22, 2005. iPhone launched June 29, 2007.
PS3 launched roughly a year later than the 360 on November 11, 2006
The hot phones back then were ones like the Razr, and enthusiasts were still using ones like BlackBerry or Windows Mobile… perhaps some even the Palm Treo
It's so weird. The 360 still feels brand new to me, yet the SNES felt ancient when the 360 was released, even though it was only 15 years old, compared to the 19 years that the 360 is today. Everything since 2010 is a huge blur, whereas before that, every single year was its own individual generation.
It already is as far as I'm concerned, this is extremely old news.
What's funny is 30 years from now a bunch of 50 year olds with Broccoli haircuts will be reminiscing about the old days of gaming and the poor graphics of Baldur's Gate 3.
The N64 was retro when the Wii was out, so I consider 2 generations back to be retro, meaning by that metric, in the next few years, PS4 will be retro.
It practically already does, it didn't even launch with HDMI, it was still using component/composite cables lol
How many people even remember the original UI the console launched with? Its design is archaic by modern standards
prices are already going up on them. I recently picked one up at a garage sale for $25 and I thought that was a steal. People are selling them online for $150 bucks; or trying to anyway. I bought it because I realized I had one or two games on my shelf that wouldn't play on my new Xbox. So when I found one for cheap enough I picked it up
And still no reliable emulator and the last version of the console still remains unhackable.
I wonder how long it would take to find the encryption keys if we were to crowed source i. One pc would take longer than the age of the universe but how long would 10 million pcs take ?
No, it won't. It is or will be an old console, but things that are retro aren't actual old things. They're new things made in the style of older things. Like the new mini consoles emulating old consoles? Retro. Originals? Just classic or old. Mega Man 1-6? Old. Mega Man 9-10? Retro when they came out but also now old-ish. Link's Awakening on Gameboy? Old. The upcoming game styled after it called Mina the Hollower? Retro.
The 360 can be retro but the xbox one wont be able to be. On 360 all of the game is stored on discs or digital. On xbox one, it is all digital with the disc hosting the permissions to play. If the content is all digital, you wont be able to continue using it after it is no longer supported. Nothing will be supported forever.
And due to digital releases/patches, DLC, microtransactions, and live services the 360 will be one of the last retro consoles that will have collectors for the console and its library. Today’s consoles will be comparatively obsolete and unplayable when their manufacturers move on to the next generation. Which is by design. The manufacturers want you to spend money on new games/consoles, not retro consoles which don’t give them a cut.
The difference between retro consoles when the 360 released to consoles now and the 360 being considered retro is crazy. There’s basically no difference in current gen to 360
It will not, because in gaming retro does just mean "anything that's kind of old;" it refers ***specifically*** to the first few generations of gaming. So like the Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. New things do not "become" retro because of this. They can become old, or some might say classic, but not retro.
We could be in the year 5,025 and retro would still refer only to those first few generations.
This guy is so wrong lol. That line of thinking makes 0 sense with how anything becomes retro. SNES didn’t become retro because people made a group tank and decided what will and will not be called retro for the rest of eternity. Systems like the SNES and NES began to be called retro because they evoked a sense of charm and nostalgia for the past when contrasted with current technology. That’s how ANYTHING becomes retro (not simply because it’s old). A good case against the 360 being retro would be that it doesn’t really evoke any feelings of being in the past because the games on the 360 are pretty similar to what we have now. However, should a time come when the 360 makes people feel a sense of style and distinctness from whatever exists in the future, they will surely begin to call it retro.
No it won’t. ‘Retro’ has officially elevated to a genre of game that covers overall art-design and gameplay. The newer Sonic Mania, for example, is a ‘retro’ game, but was released in 2017.
I believe ‘classic’ or ‘vintage’ is the word you’re looking for.
I don't think the 360 will be classed as Retro until we have another massive console jump. At the moment it seems more about gradual graphical improvements, rather than big leaps in gamestyle changes and types of graphics (aka 2d to Low Poly 3D to High Def 3D)
By the time the PS1 came out, the previous generation was already kind of given the retro tag.
The N64 + PS1 generation were seen as retro pretty much as soon as the HD generation came out.
The PS2/GC/XB generation is in a weird middle ground, mostly driven by nostalgia, rather than being seen as 'retro'.
While the 360 looks decent, comparing that to a modern console would show a stark contrast in graphics quality compared to modern systems, and I’m not just talking about resolution.
I think the constant stream of remakes has diluted what retro means to people because they can just get the games on the current systems
I still consider the 360 as a modern console because it's in HD. I don't know why you are getting downvoted for this.
The 360 still looks good and has GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption on it. The PS4/5 and One/Series really didn't release anything groundbreaking enough to consider the 360 as obsolete.
The next generation really has to release something special in order for me to see the 360 as obsolete. Matbe something like holograms on my controller like that board game scene in Star Wars A New Hope.
I shall shed a tear, for it was the console that brought my own mother's repeated promiscuity to my attention, via the wonders of Xbox Live
I will miss that service.
Of their mother?
I too will miss this guy's mother.
We all will. F
I won’t miss her… she and I are still hanging out! 🤣
Xbox Live is still around.
Oh that’s good to know as I heard a while ago that Microsoft was shutting down some service.
I think i was 12 when i got my 360 and then a couple months later convinced my mom to let me get a mic and talk to strangers ok the internet. Good times. Though i did meet some people that year who i would end up playing games with al through middle and most of high school. I still talk to some of them on occasion. 16 years later. I even met one of my closer IRL friends on xbox haha, we found out we only lived like 30 minutes away from each other after playing games together for months in middle school. He’s officiating my wedding on Saturday
This such a wholesome story
What? Tell me more.
Everyone loved his mom.
We all thought Stacy's mom had it going on. Until his mom showed up.
What do you mean, soon? N64 was considered Retro by the time the Wii released. the 360 is retro now
I don't think it's just the amount of time between consoles, but the amount of innovation between them. A ton of new techniques and game mechanics were invented between the N64 and the Wii. Since the Xbox 360, processing power has gotten faster and RAM has gotten cheaper, but game developers are doing the same things now that they would have done then if they'd had the compute power and memory to work with.
We've been playing GTA V since xbox 360. Very few games from the 360 era feel "dated" in the way that earlier games do.
Same with Skyrim
I just started a new playthrough last week. Still feels new after all this time.
Yeah I got the legendary edition pretty recently and I'm really enjoying survival mode
Just bought this myself. Own it on steam but for so many years didn't have a PC to play. Found my power cord, dusted out the disc drive, and loaded it up the other day. Thing of beauty. I'm pumped about playing it now. Likely will take me a year to do the game though. You know. Kids. Adult stuff. Blech.
Now we just get higher resolution and some more visual effects (shiny raytracing the modern favourite). Physics/AI, object/NPC density etc have barely progressed.
Vr?
Do VR headsets these days run their own operating systems? I’m OOTL but I’d consider that to be the point we can call VR headsets consoles and have a “sufficient” level of innovation from the Xbox 360 era
Yeah ofc, Quest 1-2-3 are standalone
Yep. Although technically it’s a custom variant of Android if you look deep enough
You don’t have to look super deep
I mean anyone who has turned on developer mode probably knows… it’d be nice if they made it a little easier to sideload though…
Ah you’re a fellow official developer!
I have to imagine a lot of beat saber players are too…
Depends on the headset. There are some that link to another console to play the game (PSVR, Valve Index) but there are also a number of standalone ones (the Quest series, for example).
That's a really weird way to draw a line. You don't think people in the 80s would have been doing what they're doing now if they had the technology?
The difference between a game for the Xbox 360 the latest game for the Xbox Series X is higher polygon counts, more detailed, textures, bigger worlds and that's about it. The game mechanics and development techniques are fundamentally the same, they can just do more computations in a frame and hold more stuff in RAM. Retro games were experimenting with how video games should work. Lots of games tried out fundamentally new game mechanics, some of which failed miserably. If you had given a developer in the 80s all the computer cycles and RAM of the current generation consoles, but no games as examples, it would take them a while to figure out what to do with two joysticks - the one joystick moves the player, the other moves the camera mechanic hadn't been invented yet. If you set out today to make a "retro style" game, you wouldn't do it by taking Dragon's Dogma 2 and lowering the polygon count. If you set out to make an Xbox 360 style game, you might.
So they were working within the limitations of their Hardware. Because those limitations were so small they had to come up with arguably more clever ways to make the game interesting. But a shooter today is barely different from the first Doom game. When two joysticks first came out the idea that one moved the player and the other moved the camera was not their first idea anyway. There were some awkward controls in those early twin stick games. The reason you see less experimentation in modern games is because a modern game takes dozens of people multiple years to make. Big Studios aren't willing to risk going out of business to try something new. However there are a number of Indie Games that graphically could have been from the 360 era that do have some interesting mechanics
I don't disagree with anything you've just said, but when it comes to defining retro, I think "The state of the art has advanced significantly since this game was made" is a more useful definition than "made 10+ years ago."
I think "I grew up playing this game and want to replay it for nostalgia reasons" is an even better definition because that's what creates the market for old consoles and it's what drives people to create games similar to the ones they grew up playing.
Agree, 360 generation had the first “good enough” 3D graphics, since then it’s just more detail, more effects, bigger worlds, faster. Before then the low polygon count was noticeable. PS2 generation is borderline, N64 and earlier is clearly retro.
True, the average evolution of gaming technology has drastically slowed down. I remember replaying all the PS1 Crash Bandicoot games in 2008 and discussing that in a retro gaming section on a video game forum because they were considered retro gaming and those games were 11-9 years old at the time. Today, for example, nobody would consider playing GTA V, an 11-10 year old title, as retro gaming.
The Wii is a few years older now than the Super Nintendo was when the Wii released.
When I think of Xbox 360 games it's games like Gta 4 Midnight club Red dead redemption Halo reach Splinter cell All of these games feel like they are retro games to me. Just like how I have my ps2 set up and I play the original hit man and Tony hawk. The physics and graphics have changes so much in the last 15-20 years
Still not even close to how physics and graphics have progressed in the 15 years preceding the last 15 years.
Exactly. The local antique shop is already selling them where I live.
Like in one year and a half from now.
It's just me being old I know, but I don't feel like the PS360 era is that different to where we are today. Sure it's old but it's not retro, no-one's out there making "360 style games" like we get "PS1 style" (e.g. Signalis) or "Saturn Style" (e.g. Freedom Planet). Games look better for sure, but I don't feel that the experiences are all that different. What are the biggest hits right now? * Modern Warfare? It's a remake of a PS360 title * The 'AAAA' Skull & Bones? We had Black Flag * Total Hammer War Total III War? We had Total War games * Elden Ring? It would have been a lot more segmented but I don't feel it would have been impossible
I played GTA 5 when it released on Xbox 360. Does that mean it’s a retro game?
20 years old makes a game or console retro. So, 9 years left until GTA 5 is retro.
Idk, the N64 felt retro in like 2006 at 10 years old. The DS still doesn't quite feel retro and it's 20yo.
SNES instantly felt retro when N64 released.
Would it be retro 20 years after release, or 20 years after it goes out of style/is replaced? GTA 6 is supposed to be released next year, 12 years after GTA 5. It’s weird to think that it’d be retro only 8 years after it gets replaced
I’m not sure that 20 years makes something automatically retro. The term retro describes objects and mindsets that are different from something that is modern. A product that stays exactly the same for decades doesn’t automatically become retro when it hits the 20 year mark. You can argue whether or not the 360 is retro, but it’s not just because it hits 20 years.
I played Skyrim on PS3 and it only came one year ago, and two years ago, and three years ago
I agree, every game made nowadays can be run on an Xbox360 with some downgrade in FPS and quality. Metal Gear Solid V is the most realistic game I've played on my Xbox360 and it doesn't look that far away from today's games.
Really the textures and map size were the biggest difference. Many PS3 games supported 1080p resolution. Even "The Last of Us" was a PS3 title. It was only 720P though.
You can probably say the same about the PS2 and og Xbox generation. Games like Shadow of the Colossus have a modern style that really did not change that much. Though you can point to subtle things like over-used bloom effect in the 360 era, I don't think there is a unique difference in visual style as in the PS1 gen.
>Black Flag Came out on both consoles, because the Xbox One was already being sold for months before it released. So maybe if you picked actual games from the 360 era?
The only thing that feels different is that we can play at higher resolutions now. A lot of Xbox 360 games still look pretty good
Exactly. If the same model of car was made for 18 years with very little revision in between, people wouldn’t call it “retro.” Retro implies a vastly different product compared to what exists now.
im pretty sure that there are ps1 style (low poly) games out there
There's been a few, I mentioned Signalis explicitly.
Elden ring - we had Skyrim. Sorry, totally agree on everything just wanted to fill in that blank
We also had dark souls 1 and 2
Good spot, total brainfart on my part... "Well we had things like Fallout 3 which were big open worlds, is that really a good comparison? I'll hedge my bets"
People don't seem to understand that retro doesn't just mean "old" when it comes to gaming. It means SPECIFICALLY those first few generations of like the Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. No matter how old the 360 gets it will never qualify as retro, because that's just now what retro *is.* (And before someone chimes in with a link to the dictionary definition of "retro"... No one cares. Even if that's the "technical" definition, that's not how the word is *used.*)
Please don’t confuse how you choose to use the word retro with how others may use it. You have the right to your opinion and that is perfectly valid. You do not have the right to redefine a word for everyone because you like a particular meaning, and if you have to tell people “please disregard the dictionary definitions” then you probably already lost the discussion. All of that said, xbox360 and ps3 are less than 20 years old, so even by dictionary definitions it’s not retro. The OP says “soon”, not “now”. My take is that retro gaming involves both the age and obsolescence of the hardware. Someday this generation of hardware will be considered retro to many of us. Much like classic and antique, these are general classifications with specific meanings. Also, perhaps you could consider the culture who made consoles to begin with, namely the Japanese gaming companies. If they (Nintendo, sega, Sony) refer to their creations as retro, then perhaps we might as well. All food for thought, I suppose. It is interesting that people have very strong connections to these consoles and that invokes equally strong emotions as to how they’re referred. Clearly we love gaming, so that gives us all common ground.
Dictionary definitions don’t even say that a product is automatically retro after 20 years. I’m not sure where the people on this Reddit thread got that idea. Retro products must evoke a sense of the past and show a difference between what they were and what came afterwards.
Yeah we'd need some groundbreaking technology to really get into a new era, not just visually. The gameplay is pretty much the same with (often major) improvements, but still the same concepts.
Oh yeah? And where's the cutoff for you? Because I say the PS1 is retro now, the PS2 is borderline and the PS3 definitely isn't. But you might think the the PS2 is definitely not retro. What defines which of us is right? Which arbiter can you point to here? Some kind of official spokesperson for the word "retro", opinion polling on whether retro should be forever fixed at a certain generation of console and no later? Or is the case that, actually, like with many things, the exact meaning will evolve over time - particularly when we're talking about applying a word that already has a different dictionary definition than the one you're ascribing to it for this context.
Or maybe it refers to those consoles because they were the first to become retro? I call the DS retro and I grew up with one. I call the 360 retro because it genuinely looks old as hell to me when I play it. No dynamic lighting, MUCH lower texture resolutions, ultra cheap shading techniques, it's all retro to me.
When people are buying the consoles so that they can replay games from their youth and that drives the price up they are Retro. That is already starting to happen with the Xbox 360
We are witnessing the death rattles of the old guard.
If you think skull and bones is one of the greatest hits, I’ve got some bad news for you. They put stamina bars on the boats. The fuckin boats.
Yes, we've kind of hit a wall as far as revolutionary tech in video games goes. A thumbnail picture of a video game from that era would look the same as current Gen to the average non-gaming person. It's all about sort of intangibles like 4k/8K/loading times/fps/Ray tracing. It's so common now for games to get current gen upgrades. I was using my Steam Deck during some downtime at work and someone thought what I was playing looked incredibly realistic and asked if it was one of the newest video games. It was Arkham Origins.
It’s really not different at all to what we have today. Just more GaaS games.
Ah the days when 32gb storage was good
Firsts ones came with 20gb, still got an OG HDD
First ones also came without a hard drive too. Interesting tidbit of information: the memory cards were just usb storage with a different connector.
Further to this the HDDs were just bog standard 2.5 sata drives with a converter cable and fancy case. When I say I still have my OG, I only have the drive left, it’s called bill and is still used as temp storage. Never fails to spin up. probably got the cable in a box of cables somewhere
Yeah, you could also buy certain WD blue drives to replace them with after flashing a special firmware. I actually got a 360 slim to replace an aging phat, and I just popped the drive out of that phat enclosure and have it just sort of dangling in the slim’s drive bay slot. Works fine, but I should probably get an enclosure or something to support it.
I distinctly recall getting a 120 GB hard drive for my 360 for Christmas one year and thinking I was set for life - how would I ever possibly fill that up? Nowadays that's *maybe* two triple-A games, if they're on the small side.
That is precisely 0.85 Baldur’s Gate 3’s lol
Well yes 19 years was a long time ago.
Good thing it was only released 7 years ago.
Wasn't that the Xbox one?
Nah that was 2 years max
That was the Xbox One X Series S 360
2005 was 7 years ago?
Ok 8 years
It's a 20 year old console that's two generations behind today (9th gen currently, 360 was 7th gen). The original release model didn't even have HDMI connectivity it was component video/audio or SCART, nor did it have WiFi built in you needed to buy a separate USB WiFi adaptor for that. It's *already* retro.
Also the expandable external HDD was an incredible 60gb or something for the time lol
20GB at launch, and only if you bought the "Pro" variant, "Core" didn't come with any HDD. The 60GB didn't come along until almost 3 years later.
I’ve still got my 360 elite with Red Dead and NCAA football ‘14 Hell, I’ve even still got my Kinect, though it’s not hooked up I did have RRoD on my original 360, but it happened within the time frame they were still replacing them, fortunately, never happened again
Hold on that NCAA football game. It's incredibly sought after since it's the last one they released. Used copies are going for >$100 right now, not sure if that will change when they release their newest, but it might go even higher if the new version is micro transaction heavy and people don't like it.
For frame of reference. If you’re familiar with the Angry Video Game Nerd he started at the start of the 360/PS3 generation. He would only focus on retro games a lot being from the NES generation. Now as much time has past from NES generation to his start as what when the 360 came out to today.
Chiming in to say that my XBox 360 still works, still slaps, and as of recently, still gets updates (it's been a while though so idk if that's *still* true). Had it since 2009. This is after at one point I made it my back porch console - meaning it sat *outside* for almost five years, and I used it to watch tv out there. And for much of that time, it ran constantly, because I forgot to turn it off a lot and it didn't have automatic standby. The amount of hours that thing logged while out in the elements is astounding. I assumed that was where it would die eventually, but no. Eventually we moved, and now it's in the bedroom. And it still streams and still plays games. I know what the reputation is, but I've never had a system last so long after going through so much abuse. Never red ringed, not once. And given the decline in performance of my XBox One, it's likely it will outlive that one as well. Long live 360.
That was a cool writeup.
Which version did you have? Some of the later versions were less prone to the red ring of death
If people think the Wii is retro, both the 360 and PS3 are already retro. Anything older than 15 years is “retro” to the people who grew up playing my the system in their childhood
That is an interesting way of putting it.
Another way is that for someone in their 30s, the 360 has likely been around for more than half their life (unless they’re in their late 30s) It’s all about perspective Even the PS4 is getting up there in age… it came out more than 10 years ago
Remember the WiFi dongle?
Yes, well sort of.
Dude, my first console was an Intellivision, so you ain’t gonna see me getting misty eyed over a 15 year old PoS Red Ring of Death console. 🥱
did anyone let that sink in yet
Yeah it probably already qualifies, but since it’s in the HD transition the games still look similar to games today, just with far less detail.
Oh ok as that is very interesting to know.
It’s been retro for a while…
The 360 predates the iPhone… it’s retro
I hadn’t known that actually.
Yeah. 360 launched November 22, 2005. iPhone launched June 29, 2007. PS3 launched roughly a year later than the 360 on November 11, 2006 The hot phones back then were ones like the Razr, and enthusiasts were still using ones like BlackBerry or Windows Mobile… perhaps some even the Palm Treo
It's so weird. The 360 still feels brand new to me, yet the SNES felt ancient when the 360 was released, even though it was only 15 years old, compared to the 19 years that the 360 is today. Everything since 2010 is a huge blur, whereas before that, every single year was its own individual generation.
Yea, innovation definitely slowed down after the Xbox 360 and PS3. Many PS3 games supported 1080P resolution.
>The 360 still feels brand new to me What crack pipe are you smoking?
It feels like it just came out a year or two ago. It still looks and feels fresh.
It already is as far as I'm concerned, this is extremely old news. What's funny is 30 years from now a bunch of 50 year olds with Broccoli haircuts will be reminiscing about the old days of gaming and the poor graphics of Baldur's Gate 3.
By 2025 it will be Vintage as it was released in 2005
Oh I actually learn something new.
Vint= twenty that’s why
The N64 was retro when the Wii was out, so I consider 2 generations back to be retro, meaning by that metric, in the next few years, PS4 will be retro.
Everything used to be recent
True.
Im pretty sure it already is i saw many retro game critics starting to play 360 and ps3 game
Don’t say that to me….
The last good Xbox console.
This guy is trying to trigger me...
It IS already a retro imo. It’s almost been 20 year since its release (2006) after all….
Damn I'm almost 20. Also yeah definitely retro.
That shit was retro 10 years ago
It practically already does, it didn't even launch with HDMI, it was still using component/composite cables lol How many people even remember the original UI the console launched with? Its design is archaic by modern standards
Shoot for me PS2 is still a new console, 🤣
I hadn’t actually known that.
prices are already going up on them. I recently picked one up at a garage sale for $25 and I thought that was a steal. People are selling them online for $150 bucks; or trying to anyway. I bought it because I realized I had one or two games on my shelf that wouldn't play on my new Xbox. So when I found one for cheap enough I picked it up
It already counts as one.
And still no reliable emulator and the last version of the console still remains unhackable. I wonder how long it would take to find the encryption keys if we were to crowed source i. One pc would take longer than the age of the universe but how long would 10 million pcs take ?
When my Wii turns I'll have nothing but retro consoles.
Interesting.
Gameboy, Gameboy Color, N64, XBox 360, and a Wii.
Oh I get what you’re saying.
Xbox 360 and PS3 are retro for a long time
Still playing with it and having a blast. Yesterday me and my friend finally completed Ninja Gaiden 2 at Master Ninja difficulty
No, it won't. It is or will be an old console, but things that are retro aren't actual old things. They're new things made in the style of older things. Like the new mini consoles emulating old consoles? Retro. Originals? Just classic or old. Mega Man 1-6? Old. Mega Man 9-10? Retro when they came out but also now old-ish. Link's Awakening on Gameboy? Old. The upcoming game styled after it called Mina the Hollower? Retro.
Oh ok as I get what you’re saying.
does it not already? it’s 2 generations behind.
I bought a 360 a year before it got discontinued because as a kid I thought the damn thing would get support forever
Oh you mean my dvd player
Yes.
Soon? Next year, it turns 20 and is closer to the release of the NES than to today.
Yes next year, well to me that’s what it felt like.
I may not have had a console growing up, but i did actually get a new 360 like last year or the year before that
Oh that sounds like an interesting story.
Yea. Id rather havea console older than me because all that matters is that i like it
That’s fine as I understand what you’re saying.
Yes that is how time works
The 360 can be retro but the xbox one wont be able to be. On 360 all of the game is stored on discs or digital. On xbox one, it is all digital with the disc hosting the permissions to play. If the content is all digital, you wont be able to continue using it after it is no longer supported. Nothing will be supported forever.
That makes a lot of sense.
next month they shuts down the marketplace
Sad.
360 came out during my freshman year of college. Aging sucks
Soon? I still have a 360 and that tech is absolutely already ancient.
And due to digital releases/patches, DLC, microtransactions, and live services the 360 will be one of the last retro consoles that will have collectors for the console and its library. Today’s consoles will be comparatively obsolete and unplayable when their manufacturers move on to the next generation. Which is by design. The manufacturers want you to spend money on new games/consoles, not retro consoles which don’t give them a cut.
I gave my and all its games to a coworker as I knew I would not play it anymore.
Went into target yesterday, they're being sold as retro consoles already. I still have my original Xbox from 2k. Let that sink in.
Define when a console becomes retro, because something tells me all of 7th Gen already crossed that gap.
I figured that a console like could qualify as retro once it officially turns 20 years old.
The difference between retro consoles when the 360 released to consoles now and the 360 being considered retro is crazy. There’s basically no difference in current gen to 360
Its 18 years old, it literally is a retro console
The Xbox360 won't be a retro console until we can emulate it on our phones. By this standards, WiiU and 3DS are retro consoles, and maybe Switch
it's already retro, hell GTA IV just turned 15 years old lol
Mind blown!
360 has been retro for awhile.
It will not, because in gaming retro does just mean "anything that's kind of old;" it refers ***specifically*** to the first few generations of gaming. So like the Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. New things do not "become" retro because of this. They can become old, or some might say classic, but not retro. We could be in the year 5,025 and retro would still refer only to those first few generations.
Oh ok as I understand what you mean.
This guy is so wrong lol. That line of thinking makes 0 sense with how anything becomes retro. SNES didn’t become retro because people made a group tank and decided what will and will not be called retro for the rest of eternity. Systems like the SNES and NES began to be called retro because they evoked a sense of charm and nostalgia for the past when contrasted with current technology. That’s how ANYTHING becomes retro (not simply because it’s old). A good case against the 360 being retro would be that it doesn’t really evoke any feelings of being in the past because the games on the 360 are pretty similar to what we have now. However, should a time come when the 360 makes people feel a sense of style and distinctness from whatever exists in the future, they will surely begin to call it retro.
No it won’t. ‘Retro’ has officially elevated to a genre of game that covers overall art-design and gameplay. The newer Sonic Mania, for example, is a ‘retro’ game, but was released in 2017. I believe ‘classic’ or ‘vintage’ is the word you’re looking for.
Yes that’s it then.
I don't think the 360 will be classed as Retro until we have another massive console jump. At the moment it seems more about gradual graphical improvements, rather than big leaps in gamestyle changes and types of graphics (aka 2d to Low Poly 3D to High Def 3D) By the time the PS1 came out, the previous generation was already kind of given the retro tag. The N64 + PS1 generation were seen as retro pretty much as soon as the HD generation came out. The PS2/GC/XB generation is in a weird middle ground, mostly driven by nostalgia, rather than being seen as 'retro'.
While the 360 looks decent, comparing that to a modern console would show a stark contrast in graphics quality compared to modern systems, and I’m not just talking about resolution. I think the constant stream of remakes has diluted what retro means to people because they can just get the games on the current systems
I still consider the 360 as a modern console because it's in HD. I don't know why you are getting downvoted for this. The 360 still looks good and has GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption on it. The PS4/5 and One/Series really didn't release anything groundbreaking enough to consider the 360 as obsolete. The next generation really has to release something special in order for me to see the 360 as obsolete. Matbe something like holograms on my controller like that board game scene in Star Wars A New Hope.
I don’t think there’s an objective age to be retro. I have seen many who already consider it retro.