Xbox was first released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and on March 14, 2002 in Europe.
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.
Updated emulation profiles can be obtained through Xbox Live, by burning a CD with profiles downloaded from Xbox.com, or by ordering an update disc from Microsoft.
The Xbox CPU also contains ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys, used to decrypt game data.
The console features 512 MB of 700 megahertz GDDR3 RAM on a 128-bit bus.