XBox basic history

Photograph of the Xbox Gaming Console

XBox's Rise to The Top is a magazine style feature of the XBox. The article starts giving the basic history of the beginning of XBox. After a brief history it will start to go into microsoft's addition XBox Live to XBox. The main focus of this article is to show how XBox’s addition of XBox Live was the start of one of the largest online gaming empires in the online gaming industry. Click on article to view full screen and all listed references.

By Chancellor Pollock

April 7, 2021

I can remember like it was yesterday in 2009 on my ninth birthday my father brought me to Gamestop to pick out my first video game console. I was already set on getting the XBox 360. I had played the original XBox at my cousins house and instantly became obsessed. From that day I begged my parents over and over to let me get own console. When my parents finally decided I was old enough and got me the XBox 360 that was one of the happiest days of my life from my early childhood. Even though XBox is one of the top gaming consoles in the world now I think it’s hard to say that when Microsoft released their first gaming console XBox they knew that it would be worth over half a trillion dollars by 2021.  From the first release of XBox up until today Microsoft became one of the largest competitors in the gaming industry. The XBox was released on November 15, 2001. ¹  retailed at $299.00.²  The XBox was Microsoft's first introduction into the gaming industry. When Microsoft was creating their very first gaming console the XBox they wanted to stray away from how the other competitors were designing their consoles by making it more similar to how PC’s were being designed. To do this Microsoft built their consoles using PC type hardware that was modified specifically for the XBox as a gaming console. For example the XBox included similar parts that a PC would as in “a hard drive, a DVD drive, dedicated graphics hardware with TV-out, Ethernet, and USB”. ³  These features set XBox aside from all the other gaming consoles by letting the user experience multiple features rather than just being able to play video games.⁴  This allowed users to use their XBox to do things in ways that PC’s were able to as in watching movies and listening to music.⁵  These PC type functions within a gaming console really set XBox ahead of its competitors with being able to include multiple functions rather than just being able to play video games. A year following the release date of XBox Microsoft added an update to XBox called Xbox Live. This update changed the world of gaming forever. In the update an online gaming service was added to the console.⁶  This new online service XBox Live lets users connect with other users from all around the world by being able to play games online together as well as being able to communicate with a new voice communication system.⁷  This  addition by Microsoft was a main factor in the major successes of building one of the largest gaming services in the gaming industry.