Xbox

Xbox is a gaming console brand developed and owned by Microsoft. The game console is capable of connecting to a television or other display media. Xbox provides realistic graphics for games. The online gaming service in Xbox gave Microsoft an early foothold in the online gaming market and made it a strong competitor against other gaming consoles. Consoles in the Xbox line include Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

The first of the series, the Xbox console, was developer friendly and had the ability to easily port personal computer games. It had an Ethernet port made for speedy online gaming and four controller ports for multiplayer gaming. It also came with hard drive for saving games and game content, a DVD player and multi-signal audio/video connections for easy connection to display media and home theater systems. The controller pad had analog sticks, directional pads, and six action buttons and was bulky compared to other game controllers at the time.

Xbox 360 had some similar features to its predecessor but had higher power with respect to CPU, memory and graphics. Unlike out-of-order execution in Xbox, Xbox 360 made use of in-order execution to reduce the CPU size, complexity and power demands. The motion-sensing peripheral Kinect was introduced, which allowed gamers to play using physical motions rather than using the controllers. Xbox 360 also introduced the non-subscription service called Xbox Live Free. Another new feature that Xbox 360 introduced was the capability of watching movies with the help of the Internet.

The brand was first introduced in the United States in November 2001, with the launch of the original Xbox console. The original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The lifetime unit sales of Microsoft Xbox One game consoles worldwide from December 2017 to November 2020 were over 48.69 million units.