The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
The Xbox 360 was the first home console to be released in the seventh generation of game consoles and competes against Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii.
Known during development as Xenon, Xbox 2, Xbox Next or NextBox, the Xbox 360 was conceived in early 2003.
At launch, the Xbox 360 was priced at US$399 and the Core System was priced at US$299.
An Xbox Live Silver account does not generally support multiplayer gaming; however, some games that feature their own subscription service can be played with a Silver account.
Xbox Live Arcade is an online service operated by Microsoft that is used to distribute arcade video games to Xbox and Xbox 360 owners. In addition to classic arcade games, the service offers some new original games as well as games from other consoles.
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.
Backward compatibility is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox.
