XBOX

Game systems >> XBOX XBOX The Xbox is Microsoft's game console, released on November 15, 2001. It is Microsoft's first independent venture into the console arena, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Sega Dreamcast console. The price is currently 149 USD, 149 EUR, 99 GBP, 200 CAN and 249 AUD. Notable Xbox-exclusive titles that debuted with the console include Amped, Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Halo, and Project Gotham Racing. Microsoft built the Xbox around industry-standard PC hardware, in contrast to the traditionally proprietary design of nearly all other gaming consoles. It has An Intel Pentium III-derived processor clocked at 733 MHz An nVIDIA graphics processor which in terms of its PC brethren lies somewhere between the GeForce 3 and 4 lines 64 MB of system RAM. A DVD-ROM drive An 8 GB hard disk. 10/100 Ethernet. Although the Xbox is based on PC architecture and runs a stripped down version of the Windows 2000 kernel it incorporates restrictions designed to prevent uses not approved by Microsoft. It did not take long, however, for the hacker community to circumvent these limitations and install a customized distribution of the Linux operating system on the Xbox, thus making it usable as a fully featured PC (without eliminating its gaming and its online capabilities). Xbox has been criticized for its large size and weight compared to other consoles, mostly due to its inclusion of a hard disk drive. Even so, it is considerably smaller and lighter than most desktop PCs which contain similar hardware. A warning in the Xbox manual that a falling Xbox "could cause serious injury" has been taken lightly by some; while the Xbox is certainly heavy enough to hurt a small child if dropped from a sufficient height, all controllers are equipped with break-away cables to help prevent this occurring. Another common complaint about the system was that the original game controller design was seen as too large for some people. For the Japanese Xbox launch, a new and smaller controller was introduced, a design which was subsequently released in other markets as the "Controller S," eventually replacing the original design. While some critics have speculated that the Xbox is Microsoft's attempt to monopolize the game console market, as of May 2004 estimates show the Xbox's share of the worldwide console market is behind the Nintendo GameCube and far behind the PS2, attributable to the Xbox's extremely weak presence in its rivals' native Japan. In much of Europe, the Xbox is currently ahead of the GameCube, but far behind the Playstation 2. This is largely due to the fact that in March 2004 Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox in several countries, which has substantially increased its sales outside of Japan. The Xbox has yet to return a profit for Microsoft, though this is in line with most other console marketing strategies in which the console is sold almost at cost, and profit is made on software licensing fees. Microsoft itself has predicted that it would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years after the console's debut.

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