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- Achievements. First one to do achievements, brilliant innovation. Achievements give games lasting value to many people and also sold many games (I won't lie I have bought games just for the achievement points)
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Atari and Nintendo did this long before Microsoft, sure it was physical achievements, but achivements non the less. the concept of rewarding the player for playing a game is exactly the same.
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- Hard drive standard (except for a small percentage of 360 Core machines)
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Microsoft were indeed the first to make a hard drive standard in a games console, but they did so with the original xbox, not the xbox 360, also, the core sold in massive numbers, not "a small percentage"
In the end, however, it is simply "built in storage", and the xbox, xbox 360 and xbox one are all not the first consoles to ship with built in storage, so the inclusion of a hard drive for storage isnt actually innovation and is just a natural progression of technologies, in the same way that the xbox including an ethernet port is progression over the dreamcast shipping with a dialup modem , and the ps3 having built in wifi, something later adopted by the xbox 360 slim.
Progression, NOT innovation.
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- Xbox Live. Seriously, the gold standard for online gaming. So many innovations - friends list, party chat, Xbox Live Arcade/Store, great matchamking, etc. etc. Compare it to the PS2's online! Now online gaming is probably the biggest part of gaming now, and Microsoft is the one that really pushed for it by including ONLY broadband for the Xbox instead of dialup (Sega's huge mistake)
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Seganet on the dreamcast allowed VOIP using the dreameye camera, some seganet packages also included a keyboard and microphone too, seganet also allowed friends lists by way of their seganet email ID.
Doing something thats been done before, but being more successful in doing it, is down to progression of technologies, in this case, penitration of DSL/broadband, and not actually innovation.
You could also buy games and play them over the net on the early sega and nintendo consoles.
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- Halo. Halo was groundbreaking and super popular. Pretty much paved the way for the FPS generation. Even if you don't like it or its influence, you can't deny the facts. Some say Goldeneye was the game that did this but I think it was Halo 2 when the FPS era really took off. Not to mention Halo is the first $350 game ever (what I mean is most people bought an Xbox just to play Halo, the Halo box)
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While Halo was a great game and a hallmark of quality in its day, a great game isnt innovation, and calling it the first game to ever be released that people went out and bought a console just to play is freaking rediculous, do you honestly think nobody ever bought a megadrive or snes just to play sonic and mario?
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- Gears of War. A true killer app. The 360 needed one badly in 2006 and Gears of War also paved the way for many shooters last gen.
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Again, a game, however good, isnt an innovation, its just a good game.
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- It also helped promote WRPGs on consoles, which are now also a huge genre and bigger than JRPGs now
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Are you serious?, what do you think the PS1 did exactly?
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- Then there are other little innovations (albeit inevitable ones) like the guide button, dashboard, Kinect, etc. etc.
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Adding buttons to a controller that operate exactly the same as other digital buttons isnt innovation, its just expanding functonality, dashboard is arguable, if we call it innovation then we have to call every console interface innovation and that doesnt sit well with me, kinect was an existing technology purchased and implamented, so while its innovation, it isnt microsoft born.
Really hate when these "innovation" threads pop up, because the term "innovation" gets stretched beyond its actual meaning and padded out with shit that just isnt innovation in an attempt to score points, and rarely does anyone actually check the facts of the innovations theyre claiming.
