Xbox was first released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and on March 14, 2002 in Europe.
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.
Its Xbox Live service allows players to compete online as well as download games and additional content.
With the launch of the Xbox 360, Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live went through a major upgrade, adding a basic non-subscription service, Silver, to its already established premium subscription-based service, Gold.
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 Gold has the same features as Silver, plus online game playing capabilities.
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.
Only six games were initially offered in Japan, and eagerly anticipated titles like Dead or Alive 4 were not released until several weeks after launch.
Xenos contains 48 unified shader units, which are capable of both vertex and pixel shading operations. This is in contrast to older graphics processor designs which utilize separate specialized units for these tasks.
