The Xbox 360 is a video game console produced by Microsoft, developed in cooperation with IBM, ATI, and SiS. Its Xbox Live service allows players to compete online and download arcade games and content such as game demos, trailers, TV shows, music videos, or rented movies. The Xbox 360 is the successor to the Xbox, and competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of gaming systems.

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. It is the first console to provide a near-simultaneous launch across the three major regions, and to provide wireless controller support at launch. The console sold out completely at release (with the exception of Japan) and, as of June 30, 2007, shipped 11.6 million units worldwide. It is available in three versions as listed below.

Known during development as Xenon, Xbox 2, Xbox FS, Xbox Next or NextBox, the Xbox 360 was conceived in early 2003. In February 2003, planning for the Xenon software platform began, and was headed by Microsoft VP J Allard.That month, Microsoft held an event for 400 developers in Bellevue, Washington, to recruit support for the system. Also that month, Peter Moore, former president of Sega of America, joined Microsoft. On August 12, 2003, ATI signed on to produce the graphic processing unit for the new console, a deal which was publicly announced two days later. The following month, IBM signed on to develop the triple-core CPU for the console.[4] Before the launch of the Xbox 360, several alpha development kits were spotted using Apple's Power Mac G5 hardware. Microsoft chose to use these systems for their PowerPC architecture, which is similar to that of the Xenon CPU used in the system. However, the frame rates suffered running the Xbox 360 games on the G5. A rough estimate placed the G5 at about one-third as powerful as the 360, and not powerful enough to properly run the Xbox 360 titles on display at full speed. On October 24, 2005, Microsoft shut down Xbox Live for a day to upgrade it for the Xbox 360.

The promotional campaign for Xbox 360 began on March 14, 2005, with the opening of an alternate reality game called Our Colony. Throughout March and April it offered challenges to its community, rewarding solutions with cropped pictures of the console and game screenshots. The end of Our Colony came on May 12, 2005, with the release of a video where J Allard of Microsoft showed off the Xbox 360 console. The official unveiling of the Xbox 360 occurred the same day on MTV in a program called MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed. In October 2005, a similar alternate reality game was created, Hex168, to promote the system before launch.

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005, in the United States and Canada; December 2, 2005, in Europe and December 10, 2005, in Japan. It was later launched in Mexico, Colombia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, India, Brazil, Poland, and Czech Republic. Microsoft has additionally announced official launches in: Hungary, Slovakia, and the Philippines. In its first year on the market, the system launched in 36 countries, more countries than any console has launched in a single year. 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.

On the day of the Xbox 360's release, Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox LIVE was shut down for 24 hours and went through a major upgrade, adding a basic non-subscription service, Silver, to its already established premium subscription-based service. Xbox LIVE Silver is free of charge and included with all SKUs of the console and allows users to create a user profile, join on message boards, as well as access Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace and talk to other members.] An Xbox LIVE Silver account does not generally support multiplayer gaming; however, some games that have rather limited online functions anyway (e.g.. Viva Pinata) or games that feature their own subscription service (e.g.. EA Sports games) can be played with a Silver account. Xbox LIVE supports voice communication along with video communication, a feature possible with the Xbox Live Vision; an add-on USB web camera designed specifically for the Xbox 360. The Gamer tag of a player with a Silver account has a silver trim, rather than gold.

Xbox LIVE Gold has the same features as Silver, plus integrated online game playing capabilities outside the third-party subscriptions previously mentioned. Microsoft has allowed for previous Xbox LIVE subscribers to maintain their profile information, friends list, and games history when they make the transition to Xbox LIVE Gold. To transfer an Xbox LIVE account to the new system, users need to link a Windows Live ID to their gamer tag on Xbox.com. When users go to add an Xbox LIVE enabled profile to their console, they need to provide the console with their passport account information and the last four digits of their credit card number, which is used for verification purposes and billing. An Xbox LIVE Gold account has an annual cost of US$49.99, C$59.99, GB£39.99, or €59.99. As of July 11, 2007, Xbox LIVE has over 7 million subscribers.

The Xbox LIVE Marketplace is a virtual market designed for the console that allows Xbox LIVE users to download purchased or promotional content. The service offers movie and game trailers, game demos, Xbox LIVE Arcade games, gamer tag images and Xbox 360 Dashboard themes as well as in-game content (items, costumes, levels etc). These features are available to both silver and gold members on Xbox Live. A hard drive or memory unit is needed to store products purchased from Xbox LIVE Marketplace. In order to download priced content, users are required to purchase Microsoft Points for use as scrip. Some products are free to download. Users were able to view items available to download on the service through a PC via the Xbox Live Pipeline website. An estimated seventy percent of Xbox LIVE users download items from Marketplace.

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 such as Ms. Pac-Man, the service offers some new original games like Assault Heroes. In addition it features games from other consoles, such as the PlayStation's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and PC games such as Zuma. The service was first launched on November 3, 2004, and offers games for about US$5 to $15. Items are purchased using Microsoft Points, a scrip used to reduce credit card transaction charges. On November 22, 2005, Xbox LIVE Arcade was re-launched with the release of the Xbox 360, in which new games and features were offered. The games are generally aimed toward more casual gamers; examples of the more popular titles are Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, and UNO.

The Xbox 360 supports videos in .wmv-format, as well as high-definition .wmv-videos, H.264, and MPEG-4 and Playsforsure WMV videos.

The Xbox 360 also supports audio playback, with music player controls accessible through the Xbox 360 Guide button. Users may play back their own music while playing games or using the dashboard, and can even play music along with an interactive visual synthesizer.

The Xbox 360 can also display pictures and perform slideshows of photo collections with various transition effects. Users can also play audio in the background while presenting a slideshow of photos.

Music, photos and videos can be played from standard USB mass storage devices, Xbox 360 proprietary storage devices (such as memory cards or Xbox 360 hard drives), and servers or computers with Windows Media Centre Edition within the local-area network in streaming mode.

Microsoft tasked AKQA with creating the graphical user interface or GUI. The console's GUI is the Xbox 360 Dashboard; a tabbed interface that features five "Blades" (formerly only four blades). It can be launched automatically when the console boots up without a disc, or when the disc tray is ejected. However, the user may choose to launch a game automatically if a disc is inserted. A simplified version of it can also be accessed at any time via the Xbox Guide button on the game pad. This simplified version shows the user's gamer card, Xbox LIVE messages and friends list. It also allows for personal and music settings, in addition to voice or video chats, or returning to the primary Dashboard from the game.

Since the console's release, Microsoft has released several updates for the Dashboard software. These updates have included adding new features to the console; enhancing Xbox Live functionality and multimedia playback capabilities; adding compatibility for new accessories; and fixing bugs in the software. The latest Dashboard update, revision 2.0.5787, was made available on September 20, 2007.

Microsoft XNA is a set of tools and technologies that includes XNA Studio, which provides versions of key production tools such as asset management, defect tracking, project automation and work lists. These tools are designed to work together to automate common development tasks and present interfaces tailored to the different functions within the team. 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. A second, near feature complete beta version was released on November 1, 2006. The final feature complete version, 1.0, was released on December 11, 2006. For a US$99/GB£65 yearly subscription fee users can join a "creators club" which lets them transport code onto their 360 and share their content with others. In the UK, there is also a 4 month subscription to the "creators club" which costs £30 GBP.

Backward compatibility is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox. Emulated games offer graphical enhancements because they are rendered in 720p, 1080i, or 1080p HD resolution with anti-aliasing enabled rather than the Xbox standard of 480p (anti-aliasing is also applied when the output resolution is 480p.) Some games also benefit from an improvement in the rendered draw distance, possibly due to the system's greater memory bandwidth. However there are also games that do not perform well in emulation; these often exhibit a lower frame rate on the Xbox 360, as well as various sound bugs and occasional game play glitches. A hard drive and the downloading of an emulation profile is needed in order to play original Xbox games. Updated emulation profiles are automatically obtained through Xbox LIVE, or alternatively they can be burned to a CD with files downloaded from Xbox.com, or by ordering a free update disc from Microsoft. The full list of backward-compatible games is maintained at Xbox.com.

The current U.S. list includes 394 games as of the July 12, 2007, update; fewer titles are backward compatible in European and Japanese markets, with 295 and 101 titles, respectively. 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. They have since made multiple statements indicating that this may never be complete, and the rate of updates to the backwards compatibility list is in line with this stated attitude.

The Xbox 360 launched with a number of games. The console's best-selling game for 2005, Call of Duty 2, sold over a million copies. Five other games sold as well in the console's first year in the market: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Dead or Alive 4, Saints Row and Gears of War. As of October 18, 2007, Halo 3 is the Xbox 360's best-selling game with 3.3 million copies sold in the U.S. First-party developer Rare had two games at launch: Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo: Elements of Power. Only six games were initially offered in Japan, and eagerly anticipated titles like Dead or Alive 4 and Enchanted Arms were not released until several weeks after launch. Games more suitable to the region are planned or have since been released, such as Chromehounds, Ninety-Nine Nights, and Phantasy Star Universe. Microsoft-backed Mistwalker has since released Blue Dragon in the region, and currently has two other Japanese-style games in development, Lost Odyssey and Cry On. On October 19, 2006, over 10,000 pre-orders of a limited-edition Blue Dragon bundle sold out in Japan on the first day. The pack, priced at JP¥29,800 includes the Xbox 360 core system with a copy of Blue Dragon, along with a table calendar, Blue Dragon faceplate, and five miniature character figures. At the Lepzig game convention in 2007, Microsoft revealed details of PGR4, Rock Band, Tom Clancy's EndWar, Dark Sector, FIFA 08, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

E3 2006 was the first large-scale show after the console's launch and the first trailer for Halo 3, the sequel to the original Xbox's best selling game, was shown there. Fable 2, a sequel to the Xbox's best-selling RPG, was also shown, along with Alan Wake, Mass Effect and Too Human. Bill Gates spoke of plans to integrate several Microsoft services into one entity with Live Anywhere. This service will allow multiplayer games and communication possible between Xbox 360 and the Windows Vista operating system for the PC. Shadow run was the first game announced to be compatible with Live Anywhere. Several games originally released on PC have also been released on the Xbox 360, such as F.E.A.R. and Quake 4. Grand Theft Auto IV was shown and will be the first title in the series to be released for the Xbox 360 the same day as its PlayStation 3 counterpart. At X06, Microsoft announced new titles, along with information on future releases. Splinter Cell: Conviction, set to release after Splinter Cell: Double Agent, was announced to be exclusive to the Xbox 360, as were BioShock and Banjo-Kazooie 3. At the event, Halo Wars was also announced, along with an untitled Halo project. Microsoft published sequels to some of its more successful franchises on the original Xbox, such as Forza Motorsport 2, Project Gorham Racing 3 & 4, and Fuzion Frenzy 2. In addition to sequels, they have published original games based on new IPs such as Viva Piñata and Gears of War.

Hardware

The main unit of the Xbox 360 itself has slight double concavity in matte white or black. It features a port on the top (when vertical, left side when horizontal) to which a custom-housed hard drive unit can be attached in sizes of either 20, or 120 GB. Inside, the Xbox 360 uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU. Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos which has 10 MB of embedded eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size.

Accessories

Many accessories are available for the console including both wired and wireless controllers, a wireless steering wheel, headsets, a web camera, an HD DVD player, two sizes of memory cards, two sizes of hard drives, and more, all of which are styled to match the console.

In the case of a hardware failure, the ring of light display on the front of the console itself changes from green to red, a case known as the "Red Ring Of Death". The notification quickly became common and infamous. In response to high levels of Three Red Light errors, Microsoft released a public letter of apology and extended its warranty to cover users experiencing the Three Red Light error for three years. As of July 5th, 2007, any user experiencing a general hardware error indicated by the three flashing red lights will be covered by a 3 year warranty from date of purchase.

According to the German computer magazine the main reason for the problems is that the wrong type of lead free solder was used, a type that when exposed to elevated temperatures for a long time becomes brittle and can develop hair-line cracks that are almost irreparable. They also revealed that representatives of the three largest Xbox 360 resellers in the world, (EB Games, Game stop and Best Buy) told c't that the failure rate of the Xbox 360 is between 30 and 33%, and that the largest repair shop in Britain, Micro mart, stopped repairing Xbox 360s because they were unable to fully repair the defective systems and because the Xbox 360 has a "fatal design flaw".

On April 14, 2007, the Dutch TV program Kassa, as a reaction to over a thousand customers complaining that their Xbox 360s had scratched their game discs, broadcast a program in which they discussed an investigation they had launched. The test indicated that some Xbox 360s, equipped with Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology (TSST) DVD players, scratch DVDs spontaneously, even when the Xbox 360 is placed on a stable surface, rendering the DVDs unplayable. A technician from Kassa earlier had found the main reason for the problem. The affected drives do not have the usual four protective pads around the laser disks lens, to prevented the lens from contacting, (and thus scratching) the disk. Some other technicians independently also found out that the drives do not have the protective rubber pieces inside the body of the drive that prevent the disc from tipping and hitting the laser head. Though in the Original Xbox, and commercial versions of these drives, these disc protection measures were found." A reseller (BOL.com) that was sued by one of the gamers that took part in the Kassa program, attended the broadcast and provided replacement equipment to the user. Additionally, they informed Kassa "that they had contacted the 1% of users who reported the problem with the offer of replacing all their game discs and consoles." Microsoft itself, however, refused to take part in the program, although the day before the program broadcasted they sent Kassa a formal letter in which they told them the customers can contact them whereupon they will "examine the console and make appropriate repairs if necessary in order to restore the console to full working order. and also wrote that “…it is possible that scratches may originate from frequent use."

In the beginning of June 2007, the European Commission started an investigation into these scratching problems.

On July 26, 2007 several law firms announced they are investigating a class action suit concerning the scratched disks.

On September 29, 2006, Microsoft released a statement saying that they will waive the cost for repairs on all Xbox 360 consoles made before January 1, 2006, and refund any fees already paid. On December 21, 2006 the warranty for all consoles purchased in Canada and the United States was extended from 90 days to one year.

After many complaints about "general failure errors" Microsoft announced changes to their warranty coverage on July 5, 2007. This increased the standard one year manufacturer's warranty to three years for general hardware failures indicated by the three red lights. Hardware failures indicated by one red light and an error message also require repair and are covered. It is also retroactive to any previously purchased systems; original launch consoles are covered until November 2008. Additionally, any customers who have previously paid for repairs for general hardware failures will be reimbursed in full. It has also been reported that Microsoft will spend over $1 billion repairing Xbox 360s. In addition, Peter Moore stated in his open letter that "to address this issue, and as part of our ongoing work, we have already made certain improvements to the console," indicating future systems received some design improvements.

The current Xbox 360 manufacturer's warranty covers all manufacturing defects for one year, covers errors indicated by three flashing red lights for three years, and includes a 90 day warranty for included accessories.

Microsoft moved to the 65 nanometer manufacturing process (from 90 nm) for its Xbox 360 CPU in the autumn of 2007 with its "falcon" motherboard revision. Xbox 360's with the new falcon motherboard are expected to arrive in the shops somewhere in December 2007. This will reduce the amount of heat the console produces, meaning it can run cooler, which might alleviate some hardware issues. The Xbox 360's GPU is expected to receive a die-shrink to 65nm in August 2008.

At E3 in May 2006, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would have a head start of 10 million units by the time Sony and Nintendo enter the market. Microsoft later specified that goal and estimated shipments of 10 million units by the end of 2006, a target it passed by 400,000 units. As of May 18, 2007, 5.4 million consoles have been sold to consumers in North America, and as of July 18, 2007, 420,000 units in Japan. Although the console is a success in the United States and Europe it continues to struggle in Japan, placing third in the Japanese market.

During an earnings call in January 2007, Microsoft's CFO downgraded estimated Xbox 360 sales for the first half of 2007. Cumulative sales from the system's launch until June 30, 2007 were predicted to reach 12 million units, down from 13 to 15 million units estimated earlier. Microsoft later announced they shipped 11.6 million units cumulative to June 30, 2007. Being released one year ahead of its competitors, the Xbox 360 was the market leader throughout the first half of 2007. However on September 12, 2007, it was reported by the Financial Times that the Xbox 360 had been surpassed by the Wii in terms of worldwide console sales. On October 4, 2007, Microsoft stated that Xbox 360 sales have more than doubled when compared with the weekly average before the Halo 3 launch.

Based on figures from October 19, 2007, the Xbox 360 outsold the Wii for the month of September, helped in part by the spike in sales seen after the launch of Halo 3, which sold 3.3 million copies in the U.S. in a 12-day period. The Xbox had sales of 528,000 units for September, while the Wii had sales of 501,000 units.

Free60 is the successor to the Xbox Linux Project that put Linux, BSD, or Darwin on the new Xbox 360. The dashboard released on January 9, 2007 (version