Xbox lost its digital-only battle, but still won the war

digitaltrends.com:

Over this past weekend, a lot of Xbox’s online features went down, causing a bevy of system-wide problems on Xbox Series X and S consoles. Not only could players not buy and download games, but they couldn’t even access their digital libraries.

Considering that the Xbox Series S is a digital-only console and the importance of Xbox Game Pass on these platforms, not being able to play digital games was a major issue — one that gamers feared a decade ago when Microsoft initially announced the Xbox One. The recent outage highlights how Microsoft was ultimately able to achieve the digital-focused gaming vision that it had with that console, even if the brand had to be raked through the coals for that to happen.

Ahead of the launch of Xbox One, Microsoft had to deal with an intense amount of backlash because of how it framed its system as an always-online home entertainment system rather than a game console. The system was originally going to need to connect with Microsoft’s servers at least once a day, making the system untenable for those who didn’t have a stable online connection. Part of the reason for the tech was to prevent people from playing used games. Microsoft wanted an always-connected platform, but it appeared to come at the price of user access, privacy, and your internet bill. 

On top of that, Xbox representatives would tell people to “#dealwithit” or buy an Xbox 360 if they disagreed with Microsoft’s strategy for the Xbox One. Obviously, this confrontational approach did not go over well with hardcore gaming fans, especially in 2013 when casual online gaming wasn’t as ubiquitous, and we didn’t necessarily connect every device we owned to the internet. Vocal gamers on the internet just weren’t interested in a