The Xbox 360 is the first console to have a near-simultaneous launch across the three major regions, and the first to provide wireless controller support at launch.
In February of 2003, planning for the Xenon software platform began, and was headed by Microsoft VP J Allard.
The end of OurColony came on May 12, 2005, with the release of a video where J Allard of Microsoft showed off the Xbox 360 console.
Due to its early launch, the Xbox 360 has a one-year lead on both of its competitors, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii.
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.
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.
The console's graphical user interface is the Xbox 360 Dashboard; a tabbed interface that features four "Blades".
John Carmack stated at QuakeCon 2005 that the Xbox 360 has "the best development environment I've seen on a console".
The Xbox CPU also contains ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys, used to decrypt game data.
While the first Xbox's graphics processing unit was produced by NVIDIA, the Xbox 360 uses a chip designed by ATI called Xenos.
