Despite nostalgia being a big theme in modern gaming, it's easy to forget the relatively short but dense history of gaming. Gaming has gone through numerous transformations since its emergence as a popular medium, and has been at the forefront of rapidly developing digital technology. At the same time, technology that has seen major developments specifically in gaming, such as VR, has huge potential in a wide array of other industries, such as medicine and tourism. Virtual tourism has been incorporated into games like Assassin's Creed, and for its 20th anniversary, Xbox has released its own virtual museum dedicated to the history of the company.

The Xbox Museum is a virtual, interactive, and personalized museum experience that has many of the hallmarks of visiting a regular museum in person. Users can run around in this virtual museum, choosing which exhibits to examine in closer detail. The museum details Xbox's history; from an attempt by Microsoft to buy Nintendo, to the development of the first Xbox, and continues up to Xbox Series X/S, with background insights provided along the way. The Xbox Museum is not only a great way to present the history of the company, but also highlights the unique potential of gaming to create such an experience.

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Xbox: A Museum of You

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While much of the experience of the Xbox Museum is designed to feel like a slightly more futuristic real-world museum, one aspect of the experience is decidedly technological and expands on what a museum can be. By using stored data associated with an Xbox account, the museum generates a room dedicated entirely to the user.

In this room, Xbox players can find a history of games they've played, when they played them, and how long you played them. For longtime gamers, this creates a history of different moments in their life as focalized through what games they were playing at that time. This element of the experience would make it an especially good long-term addition to the consoles, as players can periodically revisit the museum to see how the exhibit dedicated to them is evolving.

Furthermore, this feature is one that can only exist in a virtual museum and isn't as feasible in a real-world museum, at least not yet. Gaming has explored this potential in a variety of ways for a while now, including many iconic fourth wall breaks in games, such as Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid reading the players save data to mention other games they've been playing.

The Psycho Mantis moment was designed to be a startling and exciting moment where the lines between the game and real-life blur, but the Xbox Museum applies the same concept to a more nostalgia-driven personalized history. The entire museum also repeatedly highlights some of the biggest Xbox titles from the last few decades, which when viewed together emphasize how quickly gaming has evolved.

Viability of Virtual Museums

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While there will always be arguments for in-person museums, gaming in particular offers a case where a virtual museum makes a lot of sense. The gaming medium has always been a technological one, and so a virtual museum seems perfectly suited for the medium. However, there are more considerations to be made in terms of how valuable virtual museums are, which the Xbox Museum emphasizes.

For one, the Xbox Museum is extremely accessible, with anyone who has access to a computer being able to explore this virtual space; the personalized section is reserved for people with Xbox accounts, but for obvious practical reasons. With the ongoing pandemic making visiting public spaces less viable, particularly for those at higher risk of harm from the disease, the Xbox Museum emphasizes the alternative options for presenting history in a hugely accessible way.

Museums, after all, are intended to be educational places, and the Xbox Museum allows anyone to get a quick breakdown of Xbox's highs and lows; including the infamous red ring of death, in a fun and interactive way. As such, this application would make a perfect permanent addition to the Xbox consoles.

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