I should probably start by saying that I don’t, in general, have a very positive view of Microsoft right now.  I’ve moved almost entirely to using macOS and Linux at home, and the computer that CAN still dual-boot into Windows does so only because I occasionally need to update firmware on hardware that needs a Windows app to do so.

Yes, I’m sure I could probably make these work using WINE.  This is a situation where I will sacrifice ideological purity for the simplicity of turning on the laptop and trying to remember what key to mash for the boot selector.

I should probably make a label to help with that, come to think of it.

There.  That’s one problem solved.

Despite having purged Windows mostly from my life, I do still have an Xbox console.

Well, two of them.  There’s an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One X.  I’ll ignore the one that’s old enough to drink in favor of the one that is… well, actually, it’s nearly a teenager at this point.  That’s a sobering thought.

One of the first nice things I’ll say about Microsoft is simple: many of the nice things I have to say are applicable even if you have a decade-or-more-old Xbox One console.  There are probably some improvements that are Series-only, but since I no longer own a Series console I’m not sure if I know about those ones.

And, actually, the positive thoughts I have are largely centered around support for older consoles and older games.  This has kind of been percolating in the back of my head ever since I booted up Dead Space to get a screenshot for comparison purposes for an article I wrote a few weeks ago – my Xbox One X happily booted the 18-year old game and downloaded my save data from when I played it shortly after release.  If I’d wanted to, I could have picked up directly from where I left off.

Well, technically I’m not sure if you can do anything in Dead Space after you see the ending credits.  That’s beside the point.

In addition, I took the screenshot using the “Share” button on the controller, and that’s a button that wasn’t present on the Xbox One controller.  Connecting a Series controller to a Xbox One not only works but gives the old console a new feature – granted, a fairly small feature, but I take a lot of screenshots.

That screenshot then showed up in the Xbox app on my phone and also uploaded automatically to OneDrive.  I’m not a fan of Microsoft’s constant attempts to get its customers to move all of their documents to OneDrive, but for the purpose of being a cloud storage platform for transferring files, it’s worth the two bucks a month I spend for 100GB of storage.

Both Sony and Nintendo have feature parity when it comes to “your screenshots automatically show up on your phone” but the process of actually getting them out of their respective apps and into my photo library is annoying and you have to do it a few images at a time.

Going back to the backwards compatibility… I’ll gladly admit that it has some glaring omissions (Why can I not play Soulcalibur IV, or buy Arkham Origins?), but it’s still pretty huge for keeping access to my older games.  I understand they’re even implementing some form of this in Windows, but can’t speak to that myself.

Finally, the new disc to digital thing is neat.  It wasn’t a big deal for my personal needs, because I only owned five physical Xbox One games and only one was compatible with it, but it’s a really nice thing for anyone with a big library of discs and I give them extra credit for letting people get digital licenses for Series games using an Xbox One, considering how many Series devices don’t include a disc drive.

It would be amazing if it extended to Xbox 360 and original Xbox discs, but I understand there are a couple of technical issues there.  These older discs didn’t have the individual serial numbers that Microsoft uses to assign rights to your account, and I seem to recall that there’s no provision to remove rights for an Xbox 360 game from your account once it’s in there – that’s why I still have all of my old Games With Gold licenses despite not having subscribed to Xbox Live in years.

It’s a shame that these very gamer-friendly features haven’t really translated to success, to the point where “Xbox” is almost an afterthought when it comes to consoles now.  In the last forty years, we’ve seen plenty of examples of what happens when the market leader doesn’t feel like they have any real competition, and it’s never a good thing.  The new management seems to have remembered that they actually make and sell gaming hardware, and that they shouldn’t keep paying companies that don’t actually make games, so maybe they can turn things around and become a slightly-more-competitive option.

Look, I’m keeping my optimism to realistic levels here.

Anyway, that’s been a very weird post to write.  I’m sure I’ll have something to rant about later, but for now it’s just good vibes.