It’s quite simple for me. The Xbox felt like the Dreamcast 2 in almost every way and when I saw the 10% Complete JSRF running on the OG Xbox in E2001 my mind was made up as to which console would become my main non-SEGA console I’ve always liked how the Xbox had the best GPU in their consoles, until the Xbox One. I was so glad to see Xbox get their console mojo GPU back with the One X and carry it on with the Series X
Also, there’s an area that MS gets next to credit for but I love them for it and that’s the feature sets they bring in on the network side. I loved how I could see what games my friends were playing on the 360, the friends list on the OG XBox and now I love how all your games, saves and data are linked to your gamer tag, not the console. No need to Activate or deactivate a console, just log in to any Xbox and all your saves and data is carried over
And I must also say I really liked Peter Moore (he did such a fine job at SEGA, but gets little credit) and have a lot of time and respect for Phil.
Also as a Pal gamer, I loved how MS looked after the Pal gamer in contrast to the crap one got with SONY and especially Nintendo with most OG Xbox games supporting 60 Hz,l with the 360 having Hardware and game releases on the same day or in the same week. Another move that MS pioneered, but gets little credit for.