Xbox

 

The Xbox is a video gaming brand created by Microsoft. It includes a series of video game consoles developed by Microsoft, with consoles in the sixth to eighth generations, as well as applications, streaming services and an online service, Xbox Live. The brand was first introduced on November 15, 2001 in America with the launch of the original Xbox console.

The first console in the series, the Xbox, was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 10, 2006. Microsoft's most recently released console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2 millon consoles worldwide as of April 18, 2013.The successor to the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, was revealed on May 21, 2013. It was announced on June 10, 2013, that the Xbox One would be released in 21 markets around the world in November 2013.

The Xbox is a video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast (which stopped American sales before the Xbox went on sale), and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996.

The integrated Xbox Live service launched in November 2002 allowed players to play games online with a broadband connection.It first competed with Dreamcast's online service but later primarily competed with PlayStation 2's online service. Although these two are free while Xbox Live required a subscription, as well as broadband-only connection which was not completely adopted yet, Xbox Live was a success due to better servers, features such as a buddy list, and milestone titles like Halo 2 released in November 2004, which is the best-selling Xbox video game and was by far the most popular online game for years.


 

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console developed by and produced for Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. As of September 30, 2012, 70 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The console sold out completely upon release in all regions except in Japan.

Several major features of the Xbox 360 are its integrated Xbox Live service that allows players to compete online; download arcade games, game demos, trailers, TV shows, music and movies; and its Windows Media Center multimedia capabilities. The Xbox Live also offers access to various (often region-specific) third-party media streaming applications.

At their E3 presentation on June 14, 2010, Microsoft announced a redesigned Xbox 360 that would ship on the same day. The redesigned console is slimmer than the previous Xbox 360 model and features integrated 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, TOSLINK S/PDIF optical audio output, five USB 2.0 ports (compared to the three from older versions) and a special AUX port.Older models of the Xbox 360 have since been discontinued.The first new console to be released features a 250 GB hard drive, while a later, less expensive SKU features 4 GB internal storage.