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.
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.
At launch, the Xbox 360 was priced at US$399 and the Core System was priced at US$299.
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.
The Xbox CPU also contains ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys, used to decrypt game data.