The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast, and Nintendo's GameCube. The integrated Xbox Live service allows players to compete online.

The Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It is the predecessor to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. It was discontinued in late 2006, although the final Xbox game was released in August 2008. Support for out-of-warranty Xbox consoles was discontinued on March 2, 2009, although in-warranty repairs will still be done.

History

Microsoft made a few crucial errors at the launch of Xbox, most notably in its efforts to impress Japanese consumers. Seeing the importance of a good showing in Japan, Microsoft went hard after the Japanese market, delaying its European launch. Europe was unquestionably the more receptive market. Two of the original members of the Xbox team, Seamus Blackley and Kevin Bachus, left the company early on. The other founding members, Otto Berkes and Ted Hase, are still with Microsoft, but no longer working on the Xbox project. But Microsoft has also made some brilliant moves. In preparation for its launch, Microsoft acquired Bungie and used Halo as its launch title. At the time, Goldeneye 007, for Nintendo 64, had been one of the very few hit FPS games to appear on a console, some of other ones being Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor. The Bungie acquisition proved itself, giving Microsoft a good application to drive its sales. In 2002, Xbox reached one milestone that few people would have predicted when Microsoft overtook Nintendo to capture the second place slot in consoles sold in North America.

Notable launch games for the console included Dead or Alive 3, Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding, Halo: Combat Evolved, Fuzion Frenzy and Project Gotham Racing.

Xbox 360

main: List of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360 NVIDIA ceased production of the Xbox's GPU in August 2005, which marked the end of Xbox production and the quick release of the Xbox 360 on November 22, 2005. The Xbox 360 enhances memory, audio, graphics, and gameplay as well as storage.

When equipped with a removable hard drive add-on, the Xbox 360 supports a limited number of the Xbox's game library through emulation. Emulation adds support for anti-aliasing as well as upscaling of the still standard definition image. These emulators are periodically updated to add compatibility for older games and are available for free through Xbox Live or as a file download to be burned to a CD/DVD from the Xbox web site. These updates are also available monthly as part of the demo disc that comes with each issue of Official Xbox Magazine. As the architectures are entirely different between Xbox and Xbox 360, software emulation is the only viable option for compatibility without including processors from the original Xbox.