While the Xbox brand has been around for many years now, it is still younger than its main competitors. People were playing games on PlayStations, Nintendos, and PCs long before Xbox came along. Yet, since its creation, the Xbox brand has made a significant impact on the gaming industry.

Xbox's family of consoles has been influential in terms of gaming hardware. However, the games on those systems have been equally important to the industry, or at least some of the titles have been. Here is a collection of the most influential games to land on an Xbox system.

Gears of War is one of the most famous Xbox series ever, and it all started with the original game in 2006. Not only was this title a success and helped launch the series, but it was also very influential.

Although it wasn't the first third-person shooter, Gears helped popularize cover-based shooting mechanics. GOW's cover system was the best around at the time, and getting in and out of cover was simply more responsive and smoother in this game than in others. This is why many titles after this borrowed Gears' cover system.

Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade contained many amazing games and, in its early days, helped spotlight some wonderful indie titles. One of the service's first success stories was Braid, a creative and well-designed puzzle platform game from developer Number None.

The success of Braid really helped raise the reputation of indie games, showing that they could appeal to mass audiences. Its story was even documented in the film Indie Game: The Movie, along with Fez and Super Meat Boy, which were also classic Xbox Live Arcade games.

The core concept of Left 4 Dead has been utilized plenty of times for other games since this original title came onto the scene and became very popular. That concept revolves around a group of players working together while dealing with very large hordes of enemies that keep spawning.

The likes of World War Z, Back 4 Blood, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and more have similar gameplay loops. This all began with the original Left 4 Dead, and outside of its sequel, it remains the most iconic of these types of titles.

Before the 2010s, the concept of a game that revolves around its narrative where gameplay consists of walking around, making dialogue choices, and doing quick-time events was a tough sell for gamers. Even classic point-and-click adventure games had plenty of puzzles to solve. TellTale's The Walking Dead doesn't include many puzzles, though. It is like an interactive movie.

More importantly, it was very successful and became a beloved game. While it isn't exactly the first of its kind, The Walking Dead still helped popularize these types of narrative experiences. That's likely why, in the years that followed, Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, and Firewatch came onto the scene, along with many more TellTale titles.

By the time Call of Duty 4 was released in 2007, PVP multiplayer on consoles had already gained some traction. However, this game took the concept to another level, quickly becoming one of the most popular multiplayer shooters ever. For plenty of people, it was the game that got them in PVP multiplayer.

The title incentivized getting lots of kills and putting in good individual performances, which wasn't too common back then. Also, its modern setting for an FPS wasn't common, either, since most titles in the genre were set in the past or future. After this title, more modern-setting shooters began to crop up.

While the PS3-exclusive Demon's Souls was the game that introduced many concepts that make up a Soulslike game, Dark Souls is the title that really established it as a genre. After all, Dark Souls was a much more famous game, likely due to releasing on more platforms.

Therefore, many learned of the punishingly challenging Soulslike gameplay from Dark Souls. The genre isn't just about formidable enemies, though; it's also about strategic combat where you have to learn your opponent's attacks and counter them, typically using a mix of dodging and parrying. Many games have incorporated this sort of combat since.

The original Portal game is a lesson in the power of simplicity when it comes to video games. There aren't a lot of mechanics in Portal. You can pick stuff up, jump, and shoot portals. That is pretty much all it took to make one of the best puzzle games of all time.

There aren't even a lot of characters in the game, and most of the environments look similar. It's all so simple, yet it works so well. In the aftermath of the game's success, plenty of similar puzzle games started to be released. It's hard not to look at the likes of Q.U.B.E and The Turing Test and not feel like there has been some Portal inspiration.

Several Halo games can be considered among the best Xbox exclusives, and a few could be branded as the brand's most influential game. However, since it's the first in the series, Combat Evolved should be considered the most influential Halo game. It helped modernize the FPS genre and introduced several mechanics that are still seen in the genre today. For example, it was one of the first FPS games to have a two-weapon carry limit and regenerating shields.

But Halo didn't just help change the FPS genre. It was also huge for the growth of the Xbox brand, which was still new at the time of the title's release. It can even be credited for its influence on online video since Rooster Teeth used the game to make its Red Vs Blue series, which pre-dated the invention of YouTube. So, Combat Evolved is influential in plenty of ways.