The Xbox is a sixth-generation 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 and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. 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 allowed players to play games online.

The Xbox 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; any in-warranty repair now needed will not be undertaken and faulty consoles will be replaced with an Xbox 360 instead. Xbox Live support was discontinued on April 15, 2010.



In 1998 four engineers from Microsofts DirectX team, Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Ted Hase and DirectX team leader Otto Berkes, disassembled some Dell laptop computers to construct a prototype Microsoft Windows-based video game console. The team hoped to create a console to compete with the Sony PlayStation 2, which was luring game developers away from the Windows platform. The team approached Ed Fries, the leader of Microsofts game publishing business at the time, and pitched their DirectX Box console based on the DirectX graphics technology developed by Berkes team. Fries decided to support the teams idea of creating a Windows DirectX based console

During development, the original DirectX box name was shortened to Xbox. Microsofts marketing department did not like the Xbox name, and suggested many alternatives. During focus testing, the Xbox name was left on the list of possible names to demonstrate how unpopular the Xbox name would be with consumers. However, consumer testing revealed that Xbox was preferred by far over the other suggested names and Xbox became the official name of the product.

The Xbox was Microsoft's first video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned publicly 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 newWhen Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were impressed by the console's technology. At the time of Gates' announcement, Sega's Dreamcast sales were diminishing and Sony's PlayStation 2 was just going on sale in Japan.
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. Halo: Combat Evolved proved a good application to drive the Xbox's sales. In 2002, Microsoft made 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, Project Gotham Racing and Jet Set Radio Future.
CONSOLE SPECIFICATIONS
CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz, custom Intel Pentium III 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 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 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 Ti500 PC GPU in performance

Storage media 25 (2.6 MB/s6.6 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


EDIT:Typo i am NOT the inventor of this post.This post was not taken from TTG