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X-Box

The Microsoft Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console first released on November 15, 2001 in North America, then released on February 22, 2002 in Japan, and on March 14, 2002 in Europe. It was Microsoft's first independent venture into the console arena, after having developed the operating system and development tools for the MSX, and having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Sega Dreamcast console. Notable launch titles for the console include Amped, Dead or Alive 3, Halo: Combat Evolved, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, and Project Gotham Racing.

History

Development

The Xbox was initially developed within Microsoft by a small team which included Seamus Blackley, a game developer and high energy physicist. The rumors of a video game console being developed by Microsoft first emerged at the end of 1999 following interviews of Bill Gates. Gates said that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times of digital entertainment. In May 2000 the "X-Box Project" was officially confirmed by Microsoft.

Some see the Xbox as a way to capitalize on the growing video game market, noting that the PC market growth was stagnating. Being based upon Windows and standard PC hardware, the Xbox was more familiar to developers and as a result was significantly easier to develop for in contrast to PlayStation 2's proprietary processor and operating system. The Xbox also presented a standardized alternative to the near-endless variety of end-user configurations on the PC. The Xbox even brought high-end gaming technology to the mainstream, sporting a top of the line GeForce 3 equivalent graphics processor, a built-in Ethernet adapter, and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

According to the book Smartbomb, by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby, the success of the Sony PlayStation worried Microsoft in late 1990s. According to article, "Bill Gates was becoming increasingly frustrated by Sony's success in the videogames market, and tried personally to convince Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei to use a version of Microsoft Windows in Sony's next-generation console but Gates was flatly rejected". Microsoft did not want to end up as being "just another corporate software maker". The X-Box project, according to this book, was a direct response to the PlayStation 2 which threatened Microsoft's PC dominance.

Software

The Xbox launched in North America on November 15, 2001. The greatest success of the Xbox's launch games was Halo: Combat Evolved, which was critically well-received and one of the best-selling games of the year. Halo still remains the console's standout title. Other successful launch titles included NFL Fever 2002, Project Gotham Racing and Dead or Alive 3. However, the failure of several first-party games damaged the initial public reputation of the Xbox.

Although it enjoyed strong third-party support from its inception, many early Xbox games did not take full advantage of its powerful hardware, with few additional features or graphical improvements to distinguish themselves from the PS2 version, and this negated one of the Xbox's main selling points. Lastly, Sony countered the Xbox by making exclusivity deals for highly anticipated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

In 2002 and 2003, several releases helped the Xbox to gain momentum and distinguish itself from the PS2. The Xbox Live online service was launched with a strong lineup including MotoGP 2, MechAssault and Ghost Recon. Several best-selling and critically-acclaimed titles for the Xbox were published, such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Ninja Gaiden, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Take-Two Interactive's exclusivity deal with Sony was amended to allow Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its sequels to be published on the Xbox. In addition, many other publishers got into the trend of releasing the the Xbox version alongside the PS2 version, instead of delaying it for months.

In 2004, Halo 2 set records as highest grossing release in entertainment history as well as being a successful killer app for the online service. That year, Microsoft and Electronic Arts reached a deal which would see the latter's popular titles enabled on Xbox Live. In 2005, the long-awaited Xbox-exclusive Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Far Cry Instincts were released.

Xbox Live

In November 2002 Microsoft released the Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing subscribers to play online Xbox games with (or against) other subscribers all around the world and download new content for their games to the hard drive. This online service works exclusively with broadband. 250,000 subscribers had signed on in 2 months since Live was launched . In July 2004, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live reached 1 million subscribers, and announced in July 2005 that Live had reached 2 million.

Market share

Some critics were initially concerned that the Xbox would allow Microsoft to extend its dominance of the PC software market to consoles. However, as of February 2005, estimates show the Xbox's share of the worldwide console market is only moderately ahead of the Nintendo GameCube and far behind the PlayStation 2. According to company documents, Microsoft has shipped 22 million consoles to retailers worldwide. Although ahead of the GameCube's 18.5 million, this was far behind the PlayStation 2's 90 million when the Xbox was discontinued (the PlayStation 2 has since reached 100 million afterwards). The Xbox has enjoyed its greatest success in North America, where an estimated 13.5 million units have been sold and where it managed for a time to outsell the PS2. In Europe, the Xbox's market share is currently ahead of the GameCube, but is still behind the PlayStation 2.

The Xbox has sold poorly in Japan because Microsoft was unable to enlist enough local developers to cater to Japanese interests. The large size of the hardware itself did not endear itself to size-sensitive Japanese customers, nor did the fact that it was produced by a foreign company.

Internal documents show that the Xbox division had invested USD 4 billion from 2000 to 2005. In particular, the Xbox hardware itself is a loss leader, since the console was sold at a loss even at its debut price. The losses deepened when sales of the Xbox increased and when the price was reduced successive times to compete with PlayStation 2 . Microsoft predicted that it would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years. This prediction turned out to be correct; Microsoft Game Studios, Microsoft's game division in charge of Xbox development, had its first profitable quarter reported in January 2005.

Hardware

The Xbox was designed to take advantage of a slowdown in the saturated PC gaming market and incorporates a built-in Ethernet adapter. At the time of its introduction, the Xbox was the only game console to do so. Also, the console cost as much as the high-end GeForce 3 video card alone in 2001, while having comparable graphics processing power (the Xbox's NV2A graphics chipset is a derivative of the GeForce 3). Nonetheless, most of these features were not fully exploited in its first year of launch, notably the lack of Xbox Live online multiplayer.

The Xbox was the first console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves (eliminating the need for separate memory cards) and content downloaded from Xbox Live. Some games also use it as a disk cache, for faster game loading times. Some games support "Custom soundtracks," another particularly unusual feature allowed by the hard drive. An Xbox owner can copy music from standard Audio CDs so players can replace the soundtrack of Xbox games that support custom soundtracks.

Although the Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and runs a stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel using APIs based largely on DirectX, it incorporates restrictions designed to prevent uses not approved by Microsoft. The Xbox does not use Windows CE due to Microsoft internal politics at the time, as well as limited support in Windows CE for DirectX.

The Xbox itself is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray-loading DVD-ROM drive and the standard-size 3.5" hard drive. Because of this, the Xbox has found itself a target of mild derision, as gamers poke fun at it for things like a warning in the Xbox manual that a falling Xbox "could cause serious injury" to a small child or pet. However, the Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being yanked from the shelf.

The original game controller design, which was particularly large, was similarly often criticized since it was ill-suited to those with small hands. In response to these criticisms, a smaller controller was introduced for the Japanese Xbox launch. This Japanese controller (which was briefly imported by even mainstream video game store chains, such as GameStop) was subsequently released in other markets as the "Xbox Controller S", and currently all Xbox consoles come with a "Controller S", while the original controller (known as Controller "0" or "The Duke") was quietly discontinued.

Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in attempt to defeat them), cut manufacturing costs, and to provide a more reliable DVD-ROM drive (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors). Microsoft extended the warranty on those first generation Xboxes that came with faulty drives and fixed them for free, unlike Sony and their first generation PS2s.

Detailed specifications
CPU: 32-Bit Micro PGA2 733 MHz Intel Coppermine Core, soldered in, with a 133 MHz FSB. It shares the same cache size and S-Spec number as a Celeron but it has a higher FSB like the Pentium III.

368 double precision MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
605 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
Graphics Processor: 233 MHz custom chip named the NV2A, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA (based on of the GeForce 3 but with 2 vertex shaders to the GeForce 3's single vertex shader)
Total (shared) Memory: 64 MB DDR SDRAM running at 200 MHz, supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
Polygon Performance: 125 million flat-shaded polys/second
Sustained Polygon Performance: 100+ M/s (transformed and lit polygons per second)
Micropolygons/particles per second: 125 M/s
Particle Performance: 125 M/s
Simultaneous Textures: 4
Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.0 G/s (anti-aliased)
Pixel Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.0 G/s anti-aliased
Compressed Textures: Yes (6:1 through DDS)
Full Scene Anti-Aliasing: Yes
Micro Polygon Support: Yes
Storage Medium: 2-5x DVD (XFAT), 8 gigabyte hard disk (new consoles contain a 10GB physical hard drive, though it is formatted to only use 8GB, uses XFAT), optional 8MB memory card for savegame transfer
I/O: 2-5x IDE DVD, 8 or 10GB IDE hard disk, USB memory card (flash)
Audio Channels: 64 3D channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
3D Audio Support: Yes, 5.1
MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes
AC3 (Dolby Digital) Encoded Game Audio: Yes (via TOSLINK)
Broadband Enabled: Yes (10/100base-T ethernet)
DVD Movie Playback: Yes (separate DVD Playback Kit/Remote required by software)
Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920(vert.)x1080(horiz)
Note: NTSC (Non-HD) TV's have less than 500 horizontal lines. PAL TV's have less than 600 horizontal lines.
EDTV and HDTV Support: 480p/720p/1080i (see game boxes for supported resolutions).
Controller Ports: 4 proprietary USB ports
Weight: 3.86 kg
Dimensions: 324 × 265 × 90 mm (12.8 × 10.4 × 3.5 inches)

Video Games From X-Box