When the Xbox One was released in 2013, I paid it no mind. My Xbox 360, Skyrim, and Fallout: New Vegas were all I thought I needed to have a fun weekend. However, when Fallout 4 was announced for the Xbox One last year, I began to grow discontent with what I had.
As I looked over and compared Fallout 4 to my game library, it seemed vastly superior to anything that I had. It had the free roaming gameplay I loved, better graphics, and a settlement building system that would allow me to build the wasteland how I felt it should be built.
While I had been saving money for a time, I still did not have enough to simply go out and buy a Xbox One and Fallout 4, so I planned to acquire them around Christmas, but one day I went onto Gamestop’s website and saw a special deal: trade in your Xbox 360 and get $100 of credit towards a Xbox One, and get a free $60 game with your new console.
I was conflicted at this point. I had enjoyed playing my Xbox 360 for years, and it could play all of my favorite games. On the other hand, an Xbox One would allow me to start buying new and better games. I would, after two years of waiting, be caught up with the current generation of consoles. At the time, my answer seemed obvious.
After I made the trade and acquired the system, I played it contently for many months after that. As time passed, though, I began to grow tired of Fallout 4, and I longed to experience my old games again. Unfortunately, at the time, most of my games had not been released on backwards compatibility, so I could not play them. I began to regret my purchase.
For months, I wondered how things would have been had I simply held onto my Xbox 360. Perhaps I could have been enjoying another trek through the frozen tundras of Skyrim, or I may have finally come to appreciate Halo 4. However, these things I could never know, and thoughts like these haunt me to this day.
In the end, it seems foolish to have ever compared these things in the first place. I had no need to change consoles, and the games I had at the time were more than enough to entertain me. Comparing these things merely caused me to become discontent with what I had, and I hope you are able to avoid falling into this trap.
