10 Things You Should Never Say To An Xbox Gamer

Bethesda’s vampire shooter was hyped for years but turned out to be a complete dud. Microsoft is keen to forget about this one and Xbox fans are too.

How dare you! Game Pass remains the single best deal in all of gaming. Great new sleeper hits and indie gems join the service every month. So what if it’s been slim on brand new blockbusters. Paid Game Pass subscribers will get to play Starfield for free, kinda.

Most Xbox players won’t argue this anymore, even if a few lone console warriors will start lecturing you on the underrated virtues of Crackdown 3. But bringing it up will invoke sadness, and sadness leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.

There’s no surer way to get fans to start talking about the conspiracy against Xbox than to bring up Square Enix’s exclusivity deals with Sony. First they kept Final Fantasy VII Remake off of Xbox One, and now Final Fantasy XVI off of Xbox Series X/S. Would Xbox fans buy these games even if they could? No. But it’s the principle. FFXVI exclusivity was even part of the reason a judge ultimately sided with Microsoft in letting its acquisition of Activision move forward.

Whether in seriousness or jest, best to just leave all vaguely unorthodox Halo opinions at the door. Halo: Combat Evolved’s campaign is an all-time classic. We shall never gaze upon the likes of Halo 3’s multiplayer community again. Do not say you loved being able to sprint in Halo 5, let alone that you thought the first Halo without Bungie was the GOAT. Master Chief himself, space hockey pads and all, would not survive the psychic damage.

Microsoft stopped reporting sales of new Xboxs back in 2016. It’s been safe to assume that PlayStation has been outselling it almost every month since. Estimates put the Xbox Series X/S at about half the PS5’s 40 million lifetime sales. The only thing worse than pointing that out is telling Xbox fans it’s “not a competition.”

You know damn well what! It’s the year of our lord (Major Nelson, RIP), and standard Xbox controllers still come with Duracells. It seems like a waste and a cop out on including rechargeable battery packs, but Xbox stalwarts will harrange you about how actually they like looking for the best deal on rechargeable double AAs on Amazon because they can swap them out on the fly and never have to worry about plugging their controller in. Totally. Sounds great.

When Microsoft bought Minecraft it seemed like a smart move. When it purchased Obsidian Entertainment and a string of other studios it made sense. When it bought Bethesda it began to feel excessive. And when Microsoft shelled out $69 billion for Activision Blizzard it felt like an existential threat to a vibrant, diverse, and competitive market for games. For Xbox owners it’s the start of a brave new world where benevolent Microsoft executives will make gaming cheap and accessible for all. Naysayers will be thrown out of the Call of Duty lobby.

Xbox owners say they want the most powerful gaming box, but what they really want is to pay for multiplayer and get locked out of all the PlayStation exclusives that eventually come to Steam. Maybe they’ll just inform you about Xbox Play Anywhere, which gives them free copies of the PC version on Microsoft’s storefront.

The phrase “Sony Pony” implies a gentle ribbing of the PlayStation fan’s endless showboating and indulgent excentricities (PSVR2? Project Q?). “Xbot” implies an unthinking machine trying to help you navigate your cable company’s automated customer service help desk. Don’t utter this one unless you want the “Xbots” to rise up and flame you all the way from Monday into the console generation.