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.
In February of 2003, planning for the Xenon software platform began, and was headed by Microsoft VP J Allard.
Xbox Live Silver is free of charge and allows users to create a user profile, join on message boards, access Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace and talk to other members.
John Carmack stated at QuakeCon 2005 that the Xbox 360 has "the best development environment I've seen on a console".
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.
Microsoft has stated that they intend to release more emulation profiles as they become available, with a goal of making the entire Xbox library playable on the Xbox 360.
The console features 512 MB of 700 megahertz GDDR3 RAM on a 128-bit bus.
