The Xbox (name derived from "Direct X box ") is a video game console produced by Microsoft. 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 (Madden NFL 09) 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
The console was Microsoft's first product that ventured into the video game console market, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. The Xbox first edition was initially developed by a small Microsoft team that included game developer Seamus Blackley. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned in late 1999 during interviews with then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times, confirmed by Microsoft with a press release. When Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were dazzled by the console's technology. At the time of Gates' announcement, Sega's Dreamcast was diminishing and Sony's PlayStation 2 was just hitting the streets in Japan.
Concentrating on making a big splash in Japan, Microsoft delayed its European launch, though Europe later proved to be 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.
Some of Microsoft's plans proved effective. In preparation for its launch, Microsoft acquired Bungie and used Halo: Combat Evolved as its launch title. At the time, Goldeneye 007, for Nintendo 64, had been one of the 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, Microsoft overtook Nintendo to capture the second place slot in consoles sold in North America.
Popular launch games for the console included Dead or Alive 3 , Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding , Halo: Combat Evolved , Fuzion Frenzy and Project Gotham Racing .
The name for the Xbox was originally the DirectX box as it came from a group of Microsoft DirectX developers, but later changed to Xbox after focus testing. The marketing team apparently "created this whole, long list of better names for the machine", former Microsoft VP of game publishing Ed Fries said in a interview with Gamasutra.
Xbox 360
Main articles: Xbox 360 and List of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360Nvidia 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 had superior storage, audio and video capabilities compared to the original Xbox.
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 free through Xbox Live or as a file download to be burned to a DVD-R 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 different between Xbox and Xbox 360, software emulation is the only way to have compatibility without including processors from the original Xbox.
Hardware
See also: Xbox special limited editionsTechnical specifications
- CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz, Pentium III-based, custom Intel Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package (though soldered to the mainboard using BGA). 180 nm process.
- SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
- MMX integer SIMD
- 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus to GPU
- 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache"
- Shared memory subsystem
- 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s
- Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location
- GPU and system chipset: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
- Geometry engine: 115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak)
- 4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each
- 932 megapixels/second (233 MHz x 4 pipelines), 1,864 megatexels/second (932 MP×2 texture units) (peak)
- Peak triangle performance (32pixel divided from filrate): 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/s raw or w. 2 textures and lit.
- 485,416 triangles per frame at 60 frame/s
- 970,833 triangles per frame at 30 frame/s
- 8 textures per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing (NV Quincunx, supersampling, multisampling)
- Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering
- Similar to the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 PC GPUs
- Storage media
- 2×–5× (2.6 MB/s–6.6 MB/s) CAV DVD-ROM
- 8 or 10 GB, 3.5 in, 5,400 RPM hard disk. Formatted to 8 GB. FATX file system.
- Optional 8 MB memory card for saved game file transfer.
- Audio processor: NVIDIA "MCPX" (a.k.a. SoundStorm "NVAPU")
- 64 3D sound channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
- HRTF Sensaura 3D enhancement
- MIDI DLS2 Support
- Monaural, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital Live 5.1, and DTS Surround (DVD movies only) audio output options
- Integrated 10/100BASE-TX wired ethernet
- DVD movie playback (Add-on required)
- A/V outputs: composite video, S-Video, component video, SCART, Digital Optical TOSLINK, and stereo RCA analog audio
- Resolutions: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i
- Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB 1.1 ports
- Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb)
- Dimensions: 320×100×260 mm (12.5×4×10.5 in)
Components
The Xbox was the first major console to wield a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to 2001). An Xbox user could rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive, and these songs were used for the custom soundtracks in some games.
The Xbox was the first gaming product to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding Technology, which allows real-time Dolby Digital encoding in game consoles. Previous game consoles could only use Dolby Digital 5.1 during non-interactive "cut scene" playback.
The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and 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 inch hard drive. The Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being pulled from the surface it rests on.
Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in an attempt to defeat them), to cut manufacturing costs, and to make the DVD-ROM drive more reliable (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliable Thomson DVD-ROM drives used). Later generation units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. These units were not covered under the extended warranty.
In 2002 Microsoft and Nvidia entered arbitration over a dispute on the pricing of Nvidia's chips for the Xbox. Nvidia's filing with the SEC indicated that Microsoft was seeking a US$13 million discount on shipments for NVIDIA's fiscal year 2002. Microsoft alleged violations of the agreement the two companies entered, sought reduced chipset pricing, and sought to ensure that Nvidia fulfill Microsoft's chipset orders without limits on quantity. The matter was privately settled on February 6, 2003.
Launch-era Xbox gaming units were made in Hungary and the controllers made mostly in Indonesia.
Accessories
The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a pressure sensitive directional pad, two analog triggers, a Back butt
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