Power On: The Story of Xbox Documentary Series

As part of its 20th anniversary celebration of the Xbox, Microsoft has released a 6 part documentary series which offers a deep dive into the storied history of the consoles. Upon initially hearing about it I thought it was going to be a flag waving, 'Good Ship Lollypop', jolly hockey sticks puff piece about the journey of the console but dear gosh is it thorough, brutally honest and sincere.

It covers the glory years (the OG Xbox and the first year of the 360) and also the lean years (Red Ring of Death and Xbox One with Kinect). It brings in all the talking heads and they are very candid without any filtered 'golly gee' corporate speak. Rather, they admit mistakes were made and say so on camera, including a mea culpa from Don Mattrick who presided over the Xbox One low of highlighting TV and always online DRM- practically handing the console generation to PS4 until the Series X made a fight of it.

I loved the series and at about 4 hours it is a deep and honest dive into this gaming behemoth.