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THE EARLY YEARS
The notion that Microsoft should develop its own gaming console began gaining traction way back in 1998, with Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Otto Berkes, and Ted Hase forming the software giant’s first console team after successfully pitching their idea to Bill Gates. Originally dubbed the “DirectX Box,” the console was intended to be the first game system built like a PC power of a gaming rig to the console market. -
THE FIRST XBOX
Microsoft’s original Xbox really was very nearly a PC stuffed in to a console box, with a Pentium III serving as its CPU. It featured a custom Nvidia-made GPU that performed similarly to Nvidia’s GeForce 4 Ti4200 PC GPU. -
XBOX WAS BORN
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. It represents a series of video game consoles developed by Microsoft, with three consoles released in the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations respectively. The brand also represents applications (games), streaming services, and an online service by the name of Xbox Live. The brand was first introduced on November 15, 2001 in the United States, with the launch of the original Xbox console. -
LIFE WAS ON LIVE
In November 2002, Microsoft released the Xbox Live Starter Kit, bringing the sort of online multiplayer gaming that console gamers had up to then only dreamed of. Playing against people from other parts of the world, with a communal environment was unheard of – especially with voice chat and a curated friend’s list. Xbox Live also allowed gamers to download new levels, new content, and even whole games from the internet. -
360 IN A BOX
Just four years on from the launch of its predecessor, the Xbox 360 arrived – beating the PS3 to market by an entire year and, perhaps most importantly, showing that Microsoft had learned its lessons from its first foray into the console world.
Aside from taking advantage of the major strides forward in technology the Xbox 360 focus was on Xbox Live, and the remarkable success that this had brought with it.The Xbox 360 was an immediate hit – not only bringing upgrades to the fans of the original -
ONE X IN A BOX
Moving away from the Xbox 360's PowerPC-based architecture—back to the x86 architecture used in the original Xbox—the console features an AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) built around the x86-64 instruction set. The Xbox One places an increased emphasis on cloud computing and entertainment integration, offering the ability to overlay live television programming from an existing set-top box with an enhanced program guide, split-screen multitasking of applications, and improved second-screen
