A few days ago I was contemplating my Xbox One preorder. Now I wasn’t second guessing it or anything like that and I chose not to get sucked into the console war as I plan on buying both systems some time down the road. I chose Xbox because of memory. For me it was the memory of my first Xbox, the original Xbox. Now anyone who knows me as a gamer will point out that in the last fifteen years I’ve played almost exclusively on PC. I’m a huge MMORPG fan and those are the games that I follow. However there is one type of game that has always pulled at my gaming soul like a star pulls on the planets that orbit it, Star Wars Games.

The original Xbox was so amazing to me because it came out during a period of high Star Wars activity. The movies were still in production (the prequels of course) and as such the franchise was booming all around. It was also in this generation that Bioware released the famed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. To add to the Star Wars flame throw in a bit of Star Wars Battlefront and some of the various Clone Wars games and you had a solid Star Wars-y system on your hands

However with all those great Star Wars games I often found myself running back to my PC for the MMORPGs that I so often crave. At the time Star Wars Galaxies was out (or in development) so my focus and most of my budget was pushed towards PC and it was strong IP like Halo that continued to draw me back to Xbox.

Fast forward half a decade or more and you arrive at the Xbox 360 era. This last generation of gaming was when my console roots finally failed. I bought an Xbox 360 nearly a year and a half after it launched and solely to play Mass Effect due to its connections with Bioware and its sci-fi setting. I started the generation with a Wii because I didn’t have the cash flow to buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3 at the time (hence my tag King_Wii, the ironic part is I hated Wii after a few months of owning it). Once the launch of all three systems came and went I found myself drifting away from consoles as more and more good MMORPGs came out on PC. Since I had spent most of my budget on my PC I also found that gaming offline was just as fun.

By the end of this generation however my PC has become outdated, I have upgraded it numerous times and now parts are starting to fail and the possible price of upgrading and/or fixing my PC is starting to get higher and higher. Compound that with a failed attempt to buy a decent gaming laptop (that’s like finding a unicorn or something, and that’s a blog for another time) and I’ve become burned out on the PC gaming front. So here I am, anteed up on an Xbox One reflecting on my personal gaming history.

I started to wonder why it was that I had gravitated to Xbox One even though I despise Kinect and at E3 time back in June I was with the crowd ranting and growling about Microsoft’s policies. Then it hit me as I went back in time with my imagination. The original Xbox had numerous Star Wars games on it and that’s why my Xbox library was so full. Star Wars games were like a “gateway” game for me. By buying those games on Xbox I also bought other games after I had beaten or burned out on them. Xbox 360 lacked any serious Star Wars presence (as did PS3, I love my PS3 by the way) and as such I didn’t buy much on the system. My current library is dominated by the Mass Effect trilogy and Halo, the two most stable games I could find. During the Xbox 360 era I spent nearly the entire generation playing on my PC and following Star Wars the Old Republic, a game that I love but also wish was significantly more (another blog for another time).

I have a lot of hope for this next generation of gaming. With EA supposedly focusing on Xbox One (according to their E3 statements) and of course EA being partnered with Disney to bring forth Star Wars games. Then the announcement of Star Wars Battlefront returning and under new management (Dice is a company I like a lot) as well as Elder Scrolls Online coming out on console I couldn’t help but break down. With Xbox One (and PS4) this generation is poised to be a Star Wars hub with the joys of MMORPGs gracing consoles. For me this is the first and best time to set aside my keyboard and mouse and return to my controller. Something that hasn’t happened since 1999 for me. Regardless of which console you’re getting this generation things are looking bright in many ways. Now if we could just get some good Star Trek games we’d be set!