Xbox Series X 5th anniversary: a great console until Microsoft lost interest

The irony is that this fate has befallen Xbox on the heels of what might be its best console hardware ever — or at least since the ugly but impressively specced beast that launched Microsoft’s console initiative in November 2001. The title ought to belong to Xbox 360, with transformative online features that were undoubtedly the high point for the brand. But that console’s disastrous failure rate due to poor heat management, which led to the infamous “red ring of death” error, disqualifies it. And the less said about the misbegotten Xbox One, and its hastily abandoned ambitions to be a multimedia set-top box, the better.