XBOX ARTICLE
The first Xbox was Microsoft’s first product that ventured into the video game console market, after having worked with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. The Xbox first edition was initially developed by a small Microsoft team. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, first mentioned being mentioned in late 1999 during interviews with then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times. When Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were dazzled by the console’s technology. At the time of Gates’ announcement, Sega’s Dreamcast was diminishing and Sony’s PlayStation 2 was just hitting the streets in Japan.
Concentrating on Japan, Microsoft delayed its European launch, although Europe later proved to be the more receptive market. Two of the original members of the Xbox team, Seamus Blackley and Kevin Bachus, left the company early on. The other founding members, Otto Berkes and Ted Hase, are still with Microsoft, but no longer working on the Xbox project.
Some of Microsoft’s plans proved effective. In preparation for its launch, Microsoft acquired Bungie and used Halo: Combat Evolved as its launch title. At the time, Goldeneye 007, for Nintendo 64, had been one of the few hit FPS games to appear on a console, some of other ones being Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor. The Bungie acquisition proved itself, giving Microsoft a good application to drive its sales. In 2002, Microsoft overtook Nintendo to capture the second place slot in consoles sold in North America.
The name for the Xbox was originally the DirectX box as it came from a group of Microsoft DirectX developers, but later changed to Xbox. The marketing team apparently “created this whole, long list of better names for the machine”, said former Microsoft VP of game publishing Ed Fries.
The Xbox was the first to wield a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to 2001). An Xbox user could rip music from CD’s to the hard drive, and these songs could be used to create a playlist and listened to during game play.
The Xbox was the first to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding Technology, which allows real-time Dolby Digital encoding in game consoles. Previous consoles could only use Dolby Digital 5.1 during “cut scene” playback.
The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a directional pad or “d-pad”, two analog triggers, a Back button, a Start button, two accessory slots and six action buttons (A/Green, B/Red, X/Blue, Y/Yellow, and Black and White buttons.). The standard Xbox controller (also known as the “Duke” controller) was originally the Xbox controller for all territories except Japan. The Duke controller has been criticized for being bulky compared to other video game controllers (it won the “Blunder of the Year” award by Game Informer in 2001 and a Guinness World Record for the biggest controller in Guinness World Records Gamers’ Edition 2008, also being ranked the second worst video game controller ever by IGN. The Controller S, a smaller, lighter Xbox controller, was originally the standard Xbox controller only in Japan (codenamed “Akebono”),designed for users with smaller hands.
That was a short article about the original Xbox. We appreciate you taking time to read it.
The Gamer God World team
