Microsoft Xbox

From RWP Wiki

Microsoft Xbox
Codename	DirectX-box
Released	North America: November 15, 2001 Europe: March 14, 2002 Japan: February 22, 2002
Online Service	Xbox Live
Discontinued	2006
Predecessor	None
Successor	Xbox 360

The Xbox is Microsoft's first home gaming console. The Xbox was part of the sixth generation of consoles, competing against the Gamecube and Playstation 2. It is rumored that the original concept of the Xbox was brought about due to console gaming dying out in favor of PC gaming.

History

The Xbox, being Microsoft's first ever video game console, was popular in both America and Europe, but failed to capture much attention in Japan (which happened again with its successor, the Xbox 360). The Xbox was originally dubbed "DirectX-box" due to the fact that the Xbox uses DirectX all throughout its software. However, the name was dropped for simply Xbox later on in development. The famous "X" emblem is still used all over the system itself, partially in reference to the DirectX software.

The controller for the Xbox went under only one revision. The original, dubbed "The Duke," was very large in comparison to most other controllers for other game systems, and was heavily criticised for being too large for comfort. Thus, Microsoft released the "Controller S" to address the complaints against the original. The Xbox is the first console to ever use a hard drive as internal storage. All other consoles either used flash memory (Sega CD) or memory cards (Nintendo 64, Playstation). Though, the Xbox also used memory cards for data backup.

The Xbox was discontinued in 2006 due to the graphics chip, made by NVIDIA, being stopped in production.

Xbox Live

Main article: Xbox Live

Rare

Main article: Xbox games by Rare

Rare's involvement on the Xbox was slim, only producing two games. Both games (Conker: Live and Reloaded and Grabbed by the Ghoulies) were overall flops in comparison with most of Rare's previous library on the Nintendo consoles.