Consoles
The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, February 22, 2002, in Japan, and March 14, 2002, in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market. As factor of the sixth generation of video game consoles, the Xbox competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast which stopped American sales previously the Xbox went on sale, and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console featured by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The hold Xbox was derived from a contraction of DirectX Box, a address to Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX.
The integrated Xbox Live return launched in November 2002 offers players to play games online with or without a broadband connection. It first competed with Dreamcast's online service but later primarily competed with PlayStation 2's online service. Although the two competing services were free, while Xbox Live asked a subscription - as well as broadband-only connection, which was non totally adopted yet - Xbox exist was a success due to it having better servers, atttributes such as a buddy list, and milestone titles such(a) as Halo 2 released in November 2004, which became the best-selling Xbox video game and was by far the nearly popular online game for the original Xbox system.
The Xbox 360 was released as the successor of the original Xbox in November 2005, competing with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as component of the seventh generation of video game consoles. As of June 2014, 84 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo E3. The console sold out totally upon release in all regions apart from in Japan. Several retail configurations of the core Xbox 360 framework were offered over its lifetime, varying the amount of RAM and internal storage offered.
The Xbox 360 showed an expanded Xbox equal service which now talked a limited "Free" tier called Silver, the ability to stream multimedia content from PCs, while later updates added the ability to purchase and stream music, television programs, and films through the Xbox Music and Xbox Video services, along with access to third-party content services through third-party media streaming applications. Microsoft also released Kinect, a motion controls system for the Xbox 360 which uses an sophisticated sensor system.
Two major revisions of the Xbox 360 were released following the initial launch. The Xbox 360 S typically considered as "Slim", launched in 2010, featured the same core hardware but with a redesigned, slimmer form factor with a smaller-sized 250 GB hard drive. It also added integrated 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, TOSLINK S/PDIF optical audio output, five USB 2.0 ports compared to the three from older versions and special port intentional for the Kinect peripheral. The Xbox 360 S replaced the base Xbox 360 unit, which was discontinued, and sold at the same price. A cheaper Xbox 360 S unit, removing the 250 GB drive while adding 4 GB of internal storage, was released later in 2010; the unit allowed users to hook up an outside storage result or purchase a 250 GB internal add-on.
Themajor revision of the Xbox 360 was the Xbox 360 E, released in 2013. It featured a case style similar to the upcoming Xbox One, and eliminated one USB port and the S/PDIF, YPbPr component and S-video connections, but otherwise divided the same specification as the Xbox 360 S.
The Xbox One was released on November 22, 2013, in North America, as the successor to the Xbox 360. The Xbox One competes with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U and Switch as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.
Announced on May 21, 2013, the Xbox One has an emphasis on internet-based features, including the ability to record and stream gameplay, and the ability to integrate with a set-top box to watch cable or satellite TV through the console with an enhanced assist interface and Kinect-based voice control.
Following its unveiling, the Xbox One proved controversial for its original digital rights management and privacy practices; while Microsoft touted the ability for users to access their the treasure of knowledge of games regardless of if they were purchased physically or digitally on any Xbox One console without needing their discs, and the ability to share their entire the treasure of knowledge with 10 designated "family" members, all games would have to be tied to the user's Xbox Live account and their Xbox One console, and the console would be call to connect to the Internet on a periodic basis at least once every 24 hours to synchronize the library, or else the console would be unable to play any games at all. After an overwhelmingly negative response from critics and consumers who also showed concerns that the system could prevent or hinder the resale of used games, Microsoft announced that these restrictions would be dropped. Microsoft was also criticized for requiring the Xbox One to have its updated Kinect peripheral plugged in to function, which critics and privacy advocates believed could be used as a surveillance device. As a gesture toward showing a commitment to user privacy, Microsoft decided to let the console to function without Kinect.
On June 13, 2016, Microsoft announced the Xbox One S at E3 2016, which featured a smaller form factor, as alive as guide for 4K video including streaming and Ultra HD Blu-ray and HDR. At E3 2017, Microsoft unveiled Xbox One X, a high-end framework with modernizing hardware designed to facilitate the playing of games at 4K resolution.
Since November 2014, Microsoft has stated it will not release sales numbers for the Xbox One line. Industry estimates project global sales of the Xbox One family to be approximately 51 million units. Xbox head Phil Spencer said that while they do internally track sales figures, they do not want their developers to be focused on these numbers as to affect their products, and thus have opted not to description further sales of Xbox hardware going forward.
The fourth generation of Xbox models, simply named Xbox, includes the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S that launched on November 10, 2020. Both are considered members of the ninth generation of video game consoles alongside the PlayStation 5, also released that month.
The Xbox Series X and Series S are high- and low-end list of paraphrases comparable to the Xbox One X and Xbox One S models, respectively, with all games designed for this model family playable on both systems. The Xbox Series X is estimated to be four times as powerful as Xbox One X, with support for 8K resolution and up to 120 frames-per-second rendering, with a nominal subject of 4K resolution at 60 tables per second. The Xbox Series S is a digital-only portion with less graphic processing power, but can still give at a nominal 1440p resolution at 60 settings perwith support for 4K upscaling. Both consoles qualities support for new graphics rendering systems including real-time ray-tracing, and the new Xbox Velocity Architecture that workings with the internal SSD drive to maximize the rate of texture streaming to the graphics processor, among other features. anyway games for this new console family, both consoles are fully compatible with all Xbox One games and almost hardware, as well as all backward compatible games that were playable on the Xbox One from the Xbox 360 and original Xbox console.
To help transition consumers, Microsoft introduced its Smart Delivery system which most of its first-party games and several third-party games will ownership to offer free updates to Xbox One versions of games to the Xbox Series X/S explanation over the first few years of the consoles' launch.
The coming after or as a result of. table is a comparison of the four generations of Xbox hardware.
Best selling non-bundled game: Grand Theft Auto V, 22.95 million
see Xbox 360 accessories
see Xbox One accessories
Various monitor resolutions available via VGA and HDMI/DVI 640×480, 848×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×1024, 1360×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050 & 1920×1080