1d ago

I am personally offended that the XBOX360 is apparently considered retro now

I went to a Gamestop the other day, and they had a little section for pre-owned games for older systems (think Xbox360, PS2, DS, etc). I was perusing and grabbed some games, but I noticed something, the cases that have the XBOX360 games have a giant "RETRO GAMING" on it in the centre. So I am like wtf, I grew up with the XBOX360, what the hell do they mean "retro".

So I went and asked like friends and other people if the XBOX360 is retro now, and basically everyone was like "yeah". I was talking to my EX about it and she was like "the xbox came out in 2005/6. There is more time between us and the xbox360 than there was between the xbox and the SNES when the xbox came out. Was the SNES "retro" when the xbox360 came out?"

I am like not ready, not willing to accept the XBOX360 as retro. Because that is saying my thing that I grew up with is "retro" or "old" now and im not ready to accept that because im not ready to be old.

73 comments

Just you wait until you reach a point where you think "I used to feel old when I was in my 20'ties. Now I'm really old."
t. Am 41 years old.
- Imagine what 60 must feel like.
  
  More like the same thing.
  At 80's however will be like "Damn, I used to talk with randoms about my age and making such a big deal in my 20'ties. And now I'm in my 80'ties and I could die in any moment."
  At 100'ties will be like "Ah, fu-"

We are not old, we are retro
- I'm downright vintage.

It is not retro. It is "Modern," like how art from the 50s and 60s is called "Modern Art."
Here is an easy chart:
1st Console Gen (Magnavox Odyssey) : Historic
2nd Console Gen (ColecoVision) : Antique
3rd Console Gen (NES) : Vintage
4th Console Gen (SNES) : Retro
5th Console Gen (N64) : Classic
6th Console Gen (XBOX) : Renaissance
7th Console Gen (X360) : Modern
8th Console Gen (XBOX ONE) : Post-Modern
9th Console Gen (XBOX SERIES) : Contemporary
- Well done

I am also often upset, confused and scared by the passage of time
- Downvote for making me think about it
  
  zero downvotes

Here here! stomps cane

I feel like the “retroness” comes down to more the gameplay than the passage of time. Despite coming out 20 years ago, 360 games have a lot of similarities to modern games. Contrast that to the SNES, which had a much different limitations and approach to game design.
- Yes and no. I only play the 360 (because of money, not choice) and the very specific brand of action games they had are not a thing today. The mechanics and presentation are "retro" in the sense that they are from a different era.
  There are many that share similarities but the more you play from this era today the more you notice how much things have changed.
- Yeah, maybe we need a different word to describe the games and systems that we think of when we say "retro". Because when I think of 'retro' games, I'm thinking of Super Mario Bros and the OG Doom and shit like that, not Halo or whatever. I'm thinking of the time before consoles were mostly just pre-built PCs in a fancy looking box.

Gamestop needs to go back to when their cases looked like this
- I miss those styles, so much stuff has a corporate sanitized look and feel these days

I just bought one last year.
It's not retro. It's in that sweet spot where it's irrelevant enough to be dirt cheap.
We'll need to wait another 10-20 years before the kids who grew up with the xbox360 have enough time and disposable income to buy and play all the games they loved in their youth.

This shit hurts me every time. I remember playing xbox360 in high school with my friends. I’m getting old.
- We were playing the Nintendo 64 and original Xbox when I was in high school.
  
  On that note, I told a younger colleague yesterday that I rewatched Stargate (the 1994 movie, which is six years younger than Die Hard) recently, and her reply was "Oh, I thought that was a programme, not a movie".
  FML, makes me feel old.

The people born when this machine was released have finished school, learned to drive and potentially even started their own families.

This was how I felt when the post about the PS2 turning 25 came by a few days ago. What the fuck happened.
Why is everything worse now lol
- Capitalism.

It was the Gamecube for me. I was like, "How the hell can a recent game like Metroid Prime be 'retro'?" and then I realized if the game was a person It'd be old enough to drink... and then it got a remaster right after that realization.
- Some other games now old enough to drink:
  Metal Gear Solid 3
  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
  The original Far Cry
  Burnout 3
  Doom 3
  
  Doom 3 holds up

- Abe Simpson was younger as a character at Xbox 360 release (first appearance 1988) than the Xbox 360 is today.

About as old as NES on the Wii

I’m with you, retro is when they were still counting bits

In my opinion, retro games/consoles are a lot like vintage cars. It doesn't matter how much time has passed because it's not about their age, it's about the era they came from.
In the case of vintage cars, it's any car manufactured prior to 1930. In the case of retro game consoles I'd say it's anything prior to 1994.
Edit: typo. 1995 should have been 1994. The launch year of the PS1 and the founding year of the ESRB.
- That's a surprisingly narrow definition.
  So do you look at something like a Studebaker Commander Coupe and go "well obviously that's modern"?
  
  No, definitely not modern, possibly a classic, though that term has some additional qualifications, so I'm not sure.
  But 1930 is chosen and is generally recognized as the cutoff for vintage cars by most collectors clubs and organizations, because that year marked a major industry wide shift, for consumers, manufacturers, and regulation, and while there have been relatively minor shifts in the industry, not much has really changed since.
  Similarly, 1994 (made a typo above) marked a similar transition, the PS1 was released that year, marking a shift to 3D graphics, the ESRB was established in the US, and consumer adoption reached a point where you could finally say video gaming was here to stay. And just like with the automotive industry in 1930, things in gaming shifted from a period of rapid experimentation, innovation, and regulation to a period of slow, gradual improvement along the lines established by the fifth generation of consoles in 1994.

I never had an XBOX or PS2. I went over to my friend’s house and he’d let me take a controller. I’m surprised this is considered retro now and I’m a little sad since I never got to play it.
Now I have Steam games I can’t find time or joy to play and with no one to play them with.
- I’m surprised this is considered retro now and I’m a little sad since I never got to play it.
  The good news is PS2 emulation is pretty solid. Xbox is less so, but luckily most games in the generation were also available on PS2.

And it never got cool super-computer action like N64 from 2015 Fantastic Four even.....lol.
- That's OK, the Xbox 360 was heavily featured in Grandma's Boy, which is a much better deal.

This hurts me. I have vivid memories of playing Halo 3 and Hexic back when I was in middle school.
- First time?
  Halo (combat evolved) came out when I was a junior in highschool.
  Before that, it was GoldenEye and then Perfect Dark.
  And I even got to play some Timesplitters at PS2 launch because the rich kid got the multitap and extra controllers.
  Heck, we're (significantly) farther away from the CE anniversary launch than it was from the original.
  
  When your fact about CE Anniversary hit for OoT and OoT3D, I felt crippled.

I think using emulation as the benchmark for what makes a console retro can be a useful rule of thumb. By that metric I don't think the 360 is retro yet as emulation isn't quite mainstream or functional for the majority of titles. It's probably getting close though.
- Emulation has nothing to do with it, Saturn emulation is not great still and it’s an old system, original xbox as well. All the while PS3 emulation is pretty good now and PS3 is newer than the 360. Hell, Nintendo Switch even got an emulator in the middle of its life cycle, does that make it retro?
  
  It's still a reasonable rule, with a few outliers. For the switch specifically, you could make a reasonable argument it was retro on launch, with cartridges and massively underpowered hardware.

360 is AAA slop, I refuse to recognize that thing as retro.

I would say "no" because the 360 did have the capability of 720p and 1080p. There isn't much you have to do to get it working with a modern television.
That's not the case with a TRULY retro console, either in terms of resolution or connectivity.
- The original 360 didn’t even come with an hdmi port, I remember playing Armored Core 4 on a crt. For me anything that was meant to be played on a crt is definitely retro.
- i agree with this. i think a lot of people disagree because it feels like arbitrary criteria at first, but even as someone who grew up in the 360 generation, you could feel that the leap to HDMI signaled something more than just crisper graphics. the 360 and PS3 were both chasing the PC gaming experience, whereas the Wii was the last "bring the arcade home" box. while things like the introduction of polygonal graphics, twin sticks, VR, and internet connectivity feel like bigger shifts on the surface, i think this was the most signifigant and the best place to slice gaming into two ages despite them overlapping for a generation
- That's not how "retro" works. If a song came out today, as opposed to any number of Green Day songs, which came out in the 90s, and 2000s, are considered retro.
  You don't have to do anything different with todays songs vs Green Day songs. You can play them just the same way.
  Yet one is clearly retro.
  
  Music and games aren't quite the same deal. If you need specialized equipment to play a game, it's retro.
- Another way to differentiate would be things like rendering technology. While raytracing is starting to be partially utilized a little bit, I'd hardly say it's taken over yet, so there's not much technological difference between a 360 and a PS5. Mostly boils down to more cores and faster with some minor extra features. Far more difference between even the SNES and the N64 than between the PS1 and the PS5 imo.
  You could also use Internet access as a determinant, but then even snes and Sega Genesis wouldn't be retro (at least in Japan).
  Could just define retros as anything that fits at least one or 2 of those 4 characteristics of retro video game consoles, but the xbox360 is pretty much modern by all of them.