The Xbox Aesthetic

How has the Xbox aesthetic changed over time?

On one level, one could argue that it hasn’t actually changed all that much. They’ve all pretty much been … well … boxes. True, some of them have slightly curved sides - and technically, the Xbox One has seven sides instead of six - but all in all, I’d say they’ve taken their name quite literally.

But on another level, I’d say that Xbox has been losing its sense of personality - for better and for worse.

The early years of Xbox were all about catering to the most juvenile version of a “Core Gamer” imaginable. It was all about being extreme and neon green. It came with a controller too big to fit smaller hands. It had ads like this one. The message was clear - Xbox was for dudebros, whether you liked it or not.

When the 360 arrived, I always got the sense that Microsoft wasn’t quite ready to let go of that mindset, but that they also knew they needed to try and soften the messaging a bit to make the brand more friendly to families and “non Core Gamers” (I despite the phrase “Core Gamer”, though I admit that sometimes it is useful as a descriptor). The 360 era still had plenty of neon green, but it was maybe just a bit less aggressive overall. Even the console design reflected this, what with its subtle curves and gentle sound effects.

The Xbox One era is where Microsoft really decided to shift things. They wanted Xbox to be associated with more than just games; they wanted it to be central to all of your entertainment. This resulted in a bunch of changes:

• The neon green in their branding was swapped out with a darker, more neutral tone
• The green wasn’t removed from packaging and the like, but it no longer had a place on the hardware itself. The Xbox One (and all of its hardware revisions) was black and white, and that’s it
• The User Interface was tweaked even further to resemble modern Windows interfaces

At the time, I thought these were all good choices. But then again, I was someone who used the console’s TV Passthrough features to hook it up to my cable box, used the Kinect for video calls and voice commands, and used the Snap feature to listen to podcasts while I played a game. Basically, I fully bought into the idea of Xbox as media center, and so I appreciated the fact that everything about it - from hardware to software - was muted, simple functional.

But then things changed. Microsoft’s gamble of focusing on more than just games ended up being a colossal blunder that greatly damaged the Xbox brand. They had to pivot, and that meant stripping away most of the multimedia features at the OS level, to give the impression that gaming was the priority.

When Xbox was the center of many things, this simplicity and lack of personality felt fitting. But when it became a game-first device, I believe that very same aesthetic became a liability. It’s okay for your device to look like a piece of Hi-Fi equipment when it’s meant to deliver general entertainment, but if you’re trying to encourage play, I think it needs to look a little more playful. In comparison, even Playstation’s most utilitarian designs have managed to have colored lights or something.

To be fair, I do find something weirdly appealing about the Series S design. That stark, matte white surface, the fact that it’s the size of a large book - it looks like something you would find on the shelf in an Ikea. It’s weirdly stylish.

But in general, I feel like Xbox is still in the midst of an identity crisis. Or maybe it’s better to say that it’s always been in one. And maybe that makes a certain amount of sense. After all, the entire Xbox project comes from a company with decades of experience making productivity software, one that’s never really excelled at the “human touch” in the way that Apple is famous for.

Perhaps it makes sense that they struggle to find a sense of identity and aesthetics, though I feel as if something has to improve on that front. I can’t help but feel that if Xbox wants to win over more players, it needs to figure out some sort of identity.