Microsoft has done a lot of innovations

[Eddie_Raja]

McDonaldsGuy said:

A lot of people hate the Xbox and wish Microsoft never entered the gaming market, but look at what they've done for gaming:

- 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)

Fair Enough

- Hard drive standard (except for a small percentage of 360 Core machines)

Most 360's sold were core, and the PS2 had Harddrives.  The PS3 was the first console to have "Large" HDD's standard.

- 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)

- 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)

This is one game, and while innovative doesn't say much when FF, Gran Turismo, and Mario games are also genre defining.

- 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.

Same as before.

- It also helped promote WRPGs on consoles, which are now also a huge genre and bigger than JRPGs now

Really the credit goes to the great studios like Bioware and Bethesda.  MS had almost nothing to do with this.

- Then there are other little innovations (albeit inevitable ones) like the guide button, dashboard, Kinect, etc. etc.

The dashboard was always chided for being confusing to navigate (And it was).  Kinect I would give some credit but really the Wii deserves almost any credit Kinect gets.