- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
The Xbox launched in North America on November 15, 2001. The greatest success of the Xbox's launch games was Halo: Combat Evolved which was critically well received[1] and was the best-selling xbox game of the year for 4 years running. Halo still remains one of the console's standout titles, while its sequel Halo 2 became the best-selling title of the console and enjoyed a long reign as the most played game on the Xbox Live service until November 13, 2006 when the hit Xbox 360 title Gears of War claimed the top spot. Other successful launch titles included NFL Fever 2002, Project Gotham Racing[2] and Dead or Alive 3 [3]). However, the failure of several first-party games (including Fuzion Frenzy [4] and Azurik: Rise of Perathia [5]) damaged the initial public reputation of the Xbox.
Halo: Combat Evolved proved to be a great success for the Game Industry and Microsoft Game Studios.
Halo: Combat Evolved proved to be a great success for the Game Industry and Microsoft Game Studios.
Although the console enjoyed strong third party support from its inception, many early Xbox games did not take full advantage of its powerful hardware, with few additional features or graphical improvements to distinguish them from the PS2 version, thus negating one of the Xbox's main selling points. Lastly, Sony countered the Xbox for a short time by temporarily securing PlayStation 2 exclusives for highly anticipated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance although they were later ported to the Xbox and no longer exclusive.
In 2002 and 2003, several releases helped the Xbox to gain momentum and distinguish itself from the PS2. The Xbox Live online service was launched in late 2002 alongside pilot titles MotoGP, MechAssault and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Several best-selling and critically acclaimed titles for the Xbox were published, such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Ninja Gaiden and LucasArts' Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Take-Two Interactive's exclusivity deal with Sony was amended to allow Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its sequels to be published on the Xbox. In addition, many other publishers got into the trend of releasing the Xbox version alongside the PS2 version, instead of delaying it for months.
In 2004, Halo 2 set records as the highest-grossing release in entertainment history making over $100 million in its first day[6], as well as being a successful killer app for the online service. That year, Microsoft and Electronic Arts reached a deal that would see the latter's popular titles enabled on Xbox Live.
Ninja Gaiden was released in 2004 to much critical acclaim.
Ninja Gaiden was released in 2004 to much critical acclaim.
[edit] Xbox Live
On November 15, 2002, Microsoft launched its Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing subscribers to play online Xbox games with (or against) other subscribers all around the world and download new content for their games to the system's hard drive. This online service works exclusively with a broadband Internet connection. Approximately 250,000 subscribers had signed up within 2 months of Xbox Live's launch [7]. In July 2004, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live had reached 1 million subscribers, and only a year later, in July 2005, that membership had reached 2 million. An Xbox Live Gold subscription (which affords the user the most features of any membership) currently costs US$50 a year (roughly US$4 a month). Recently, competitive leagues have been created, namely playing "Halo 2." Leagues include prizes and sponsorships.
[edit] Hardware
Xbox motherboard with installed modchip
Xbox motherboard with installed modchip
Xbox drives
Xbox drives
See also: Xbox special limited editions
The Xbox was the first console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboCD and Sega CD had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to this). Most of the games also use the hard drive as a disk cache, for faster game loading times. Some games support "Custom soundtracks," another particularly unusual feature allowed by the hard drive. An Xbox owner can rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive so players can play their custom soundtrack, in addition to the original soundtrack of Xbox games that support such a feature.
Although the Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and runs a stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel using APIs based largely on DirectX 8.1, it incorporates changes optimized for gaming uses as well as restrictions designed to prevent uses not approved by Microsoft. A similar approach (PC hardware, stripped-down Windows) was used by the Tandy VIS entertainment system. The Xbox does not use Windows CE due to Microsoft internal politics at the time, as well as limited support in Windows CE for DirectX[citation needed].
The Xbox itself is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray-loading DVD-ROM drive and the standard-size 3.5 inch hard drive. Because of this, the Xbox has found itself a target of mild derision, as gamers poke fun at it for things like a warning in the Xbox manual that a falling Xbox "could cause serious injury" to a small child or pet. However, the Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being yanked from the shelf.
The original game controller design, which was particularly large, was similarly often criticized since it was ill-suited to those with small hands. In response to these criticisms, a smaller controller was introduced for the Japanese Xbox launch. This Japanese controller (which was briefly imported by even mainstream video game store chains, such as GameStop) was subsequently released in other markets as the "Xbox Controller S", and currently all Xbox consoles come with a "Controller S", while the original controller (known as Controller "0" or "The Duke") was quietly discontinued.
Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in attempt to defeat them), cut manufacturing costs, and to provide a more reliable DVD-ROM drive (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliability of the Thomson DVD-ROM drives that were used). Later generation of Xbox units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. These units would not be covered under the extended warranty.