观点探讨：Xbox 主机体验今年以来表现非凡

As a humble elder gamer, I've grown alongside each generation of Xbox hardware, from palming the Duke in my tiny baby-boy hands to the golden 360 era and conception of Xbox Live.

It's been a long old journey to get to this moment in time: the 25th anniversary of Xbox. Sadly, it's been a devastating year for the creatives that make our favourite games. But, comparatively, I reckon it's also been quite an encouraging one in terms of player satisfaction and the overall console experience.

Since the appointment of Asha Sharma as CEO of Xbox, followed by the recruitment of CTO Scott Van Vliet, I haven't felt this much of a buzz about turning on my Xbox Series X in all the years since launch. Sure, I got to review and play a new Halo and Gears title in 2026, which was lovely, but I believe the driving force behind my excitement is down to all the new features and updates we've been getting over the past few months.

Disregard the games for a moment and just focus on what's been added to the console experience - Xbox feels like the place to play on this year. Undoubtedly, the introduction of the Disc to Digital feature has been a massive hit. This new feature lets physical-disc owners claim digital licenses for their games and access them on both console and the Xbox PC app via Xbox Play Anywhere. Then, of course, you've got the long-awaited Mythic Achievements (still in testing with Insiders right now), which track progress towards 100% completion of our games. I think I've got around 35 Mythics at the moment!

D2D and Mythics are great, easy thumbs-up features. But have a think about all the behind the scenes stuff, y'know, the subtle updates. We've seen the implementation of a history log to track which games we've played and on what device - that's cool. Toggles to opt in and out of Quick Resume which reduces friction with a few pesky games that can't seem to handle an otherwise bangin' feature, and even the option to customise the Xbox start-up animation (again, still in testing with Insiders at the moment).

There have been a load of really cool updates to the Xbox Series experience, and it's pretty darned awesome when you think about it. Xbox Play Anywhere is, without a doubt, my favourite feature. Sure, it launched yonks ago, but 2026 seems like the year it finally got cooking. There have been over 1000 new XPA titles added this year, so it feels as though more new releases in general are rocking XPA now.

As for the new stuff, I think I'm digging the poster-style game tiles. In my opinion, they just look so much nicer and make rummaging through my backlog that much easier to understand. Profile badges are cool too, and I've got this awesome Xbox Live Gold badge that essentially age-verifies my Xbox account based on how long I've been playing on Xbox. And how about the dashboard's new immersive mode? Click in the right thumbstick and marvel in your chosen background. It's nice.

Personally, I think Xbox has done a phenomenal job updating the console experience in 2026, but I'm curious to know whether you think Team Green has done a good job. I also encourage you to have a think about which new features you've enjoyed and, perhaps, what you'd like to see in the future?

What do you think about the Xbox console experience? Be sure to chat with us in the comments below.