Xbox One vs. Xbox 360: What’s Different and Which is Better?

The Xbox One and Xbox 360 are both still on the market, and if you’ve never owned an Xbox, the naming scheme isn’t the most intuitive ever devised. In our Xbox One vs. Xbox 360 comparison guide, we’ll help you pick the right console. If you have the opportunity to buy one or the other, here’s what you need to consider.

Getting to Know the Xbox Range

First, let’s orient you to the Xbox product family, starting with the first Xbox:

Original Xbox (Contemporary to the PlayStation 2)
Xbox 360 (Contemporary to the PlayStation 3)
Xbox One / Xbox One S / Xbox One X (Contemporary to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro)
Xbox Series S and X (Contemporary to the PlayStation 5)

So as you can see the Xbox 360 and Xbox One are, as of this writing, the middle children. We’ve put the corresponding PlayStation model next to each Xbox above so you can have a good idea of the graphical era each Xbox represents.

Now let’s look at how the Xbox 360 and Xbox One compare.

Appearance and Design

The Xbox 360 and Xbox One are from two very different eras in console design. The 360 had a pinched waist and interesting angles, with a large round button on the front. The later “slim” model maintained the overall shape of the original Xbox 360 but took up less space and ran cooler.

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The last Xbox 360 design, the Xbox 360 “E”, looks more like the Xbox One. Which in turn is designed to look less like a gaming console, and more like home entertainment equipment. This was no accident, as Microsoft was trying to push into the living rooms of households everywhere.

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The first generation of Xbox One even had an HDMI port, so that you could watch TV on your Xbox while you played games. This feature, along with a built-in camera system known as “Kinect” was later removed.

Age: The 360 Is Older

The Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s second console generation and was launched in November of 2005. The Xbox One is their third console generation and was launched in November of 2013. This means there’s a massive eight-year gap between these consoles, and indeed the Xbox One is leagues ahead of the Xbox 360 on a technical level.

The Xbox 360 contains a custom CPU cluster and GPU, based on the IBM PowerPC architecture. The Xbox One is essentially a standard x86 PC under the hood, with a few hardware customizations and a special version of Windows.

Price

Interestingly, the price of a new boxed Xbox One S 500GB console is pretty much on par with the cost of a refurbished 250GB Xbox 360. Both of these consoles can be had for around $175 from retailers like Amazon.

New and sealed Xbox 360s are scarce as hen’s teeth these days, so you can get a much better deal buying one used but a refurbished model should at least come with a short warranty for some small peace of mind.

Availability

Although the Xbox 360 has been officially discontinued for years and the Xbox One and all its variants ceased production in 2022, you can find them easily on the used market, or new in the case of the One.

While buying directly from current console owners is fine in principle, we do strongly recommend buying used Xbox 360 that have been refurbished or come with some type of warranty.

Performance: The Xbox One Wins

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Although the Xbox 360 is one of the first “HD” consoles, and has an HDMI port that will work just fine with modern televisions, it’s largely a 720p console, which can look rough on modern 4K TVs.

That being said, the base model Xbox One doesn’t fare much better in the resolution department, often hovering around 900p and looking similarly chunky on modern displays. Still, the GPU technology in the Xbox One is leagues ahead of the GPU in the Xbox 360. For example, the Xbox 360 only has 512MB of RAM shared between the CPU and GPU. Conversely, the Xbox One has 8GB of shared memory.

The GPU in the Xbox One is full of modern graphical tech that makes games look far more photorealistic when it comes to lighting, geometry, and material properties.

Movie Playback

Both Xbox One and Xbox 360 can be used as disc players for movies, but the Xbox 360 is limited to DVDs. The Xbox One, on the other hand, supports Blu-Ray discs, and a good used Xbox One can serve as a decent Blu-ray and DVD player. Especially when paired with an older 1080p TV.

At the time of writing, the Xbox One is still actively supported by streaming apps such as Netflix, but the Xbox 360 has long been left behind by those apps.

Game Libraries

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Both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One have a sizable and respectable library of games, but the Xbox 360 has the better library of games overall. Despite the graphics of this era leaving much to be desired, it was a good time for fresh new game designs and ideas overall.

There are 2155 games released for the Xbox 360, and of those 633 are playable on Xbox One using its backwards compatibility feature. The list of games that have been made compatible includes most of the best games, but there are plenty of hidden gems that can still only be played on an Xbox 360.

The Xbox One has a slightly larger library of 2871 games, and many of its best games are sequels to titles from the Xbox 360 era. Some Xbox games are also remasters of games that came out on Xbox 360, usually making them the superior versions of those respective titles.

The Xbox One X

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There are three variants of the Xbox One, apart from the original launch model, which should be avoided. The first is the Xbox One S, which is the base model slightly upgraded from the launch model. But slimmer and quieter. Then there’s the Xbox SAD (S All Digital) which doesn’t have a disc drive, and so you’ll only have access to digital games. Then we have the Xbox One X, which is a heavily upgraded console compared to the One S.

The One S is a notoriously underpowered console that struggles to reach even 1080p resolution in games, leading to blurry games with choppy frame rates. So even if you don’t have a 4K TV, the One X is the only console from this generation we could advise anyone to buy today.

You may find that a little tricky, however, since One X owners have been reluctant to sell them, and there were never that many One X consoles made proportional to standard Xbox One consoles.

Xbox One Has Game Pass

One critical difference between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, is that the Xbox One has access to Game Pass. This is Microsoft’s subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of games for a small monthly fee.

It’s also worth noting that this includes Xbox 360 games, mostly the classic titles that are still worth playing. So the Xbox One gives you access to some Xbox 360 and even original Xbox Games, and to cheap subscription services.

Xbox 360 or Xbox One: Which to Buy?

The short answer is that you should buy neither of these consoles. The current-generation Series S and Series X can select Xbox 360 games and virtually all Xbox One games. There is an argument to be made that many Xbox 360 games are not part of the Xbox backward compatibility program, and so the only way to play some of these classics is to purchase an Xbox 360. Note that the Xbox Series S does not have a disc drive.

If you do decide to buy a used Xbox 360, try to get one of the last models, rather than earlier models. The Xbox 360 infamously had quality issues in the first few years of its life, which were largely addressed with later models. It’s also as of July 29 2024 the Xbox 360 online Store will close. This means that Xbox 360 consoles are only useful for playing physical disc-based games.