Xbox was first released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and on March 14, 2002 in Europe.
At launch, the Xbox 360 was priced at US$399 and the Core System was priced at US$299.
Since Microsoft owns the intellectual property rights to the hardware used in the Xbox 360, they can easily switch to new fabrication processes or change suppliers in the future to reduce costs.
With the launch of the Xbox 360, Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live went through a major upgrade, adding a basic non-subscription service, Silver, to its already established premium subscription-based service, Gold.
The console's graphical user interface is the Xbox 360 Dashboard; a tabbed interface that features four "Blades".
Microsoft XNA also includes other components such as the XNA Framework and XNA Build. Anyone can develop a game using XNA Game Studio Express, an IDE for homebrew developers, which was initially released in beta form on August 30, 2006.
E3 2006 was the first large-scale show after the console's launch and there, the first trailer for Halo 3, the third game in the flagship Xbox series of shooters, was premiered. Fable 2, a sequel to the Xbox's best-selling RPG, was also shown, along with Alan Wake, Mass Effect and Too Human. Bill Gates spoke of plans to integrate several Microsoft services into one entity with Live Anywhere.
Xenos contains 48 unified shader units, which are capable of both vertex and pixel shading operations. This is in contrast to older graphics processor designs which utilize separate specialized units for these tasks.
The Xbox 360 controller is significantly different from the original Xbox controllers, the Duke and the S models. The black and white buttons have been replaced by bumper buttons, which are on the shoulder of the controller, right before the triggers. It is noticeably smoother, has a white-gray theme, and is very small and ergonomically built.
