Xbox

Xbox

Manufacturer	Microsoft
Product family	Xbox
Type	Video game console
Generation	Sixth generation era
Retail availability	NA November 15, 2001 JP February 22, 2002 PAL March 14, 2002
Discontinued	2006
Units sold	24 million (as of May 10, 2006)[1]
Media	DVD, CD
CPU	Custom 733 MHz Intel Coppermine-based processor
Storage capacity	8 or 10GB Internal HDD (Both formatted to 8 GB), 8 MB memory card
Graphics	233 MHz nVidia NV2A
Controller input	4 maximum (wired)
Connectivity	100Mbit Ethernet
Online services	Xbox Live
Best-selling game	Halo 2, 8 million (as of May 9, 2006)[2][3]
Successor	Xbox 360

The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed directly with Sony's PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It is the predecessor to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. It was discontinued in late 2006, although the final xbox game wasn't released until August of 2008.

History

The Xbox was Microsoft's first product that ventured into the video game console market, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. Notable launch titles for the console included Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding, Dead or Alive 3, Halo: Combat Evolved, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, and Project Gotham Racing.

Development

The Xbox 1st edition was initially developed within Microsoft by a small team, that included game developer Seamus Blackley. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was revealed at the end of 1999 following interviews of then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times, confirmed by Microsoft with a press release. ^[4]

According to the book Smartbomb, by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby, the remarkable success of the Sony PlayStation worried Microsoft in late 1990s. The growing video game market seemed to threaten the PC market which Microsoft had dominated and relied upon for most of its revenues. Additionally, a venture into the gaming console market would diversify Microsoft's product line, which up to that time had been heavily concentrated on software.

According to Dean Takahashi's book, Opening the Xbox, the Xbox was originally to be named "DirectX-box", to show the extensive use of DirectX within the console's technology.^[5] "Xbox" was the final name decided by marketing, but the console still retains some hints towards DirectX, most notably the "X"-shaped logo, which DirectX is famous for, along with the "X" shape on the top of the system.

As the console approached launch, Microsoft's J Allard was responsible for the hardware and system software development, Ed Fries was responsible for game development on the platform, and Mitch Koch was responsible for sales and marketing; all three reported to Robbie Bach. This team was also primarily responsible for Microsoft's follow-up product, the Xbox 360.

Price history

With the expensive PlayStation 2 and the moderately priced but seemingly family entertainment focused GameCube as competition, many gamers were eager to invest in the console. The Xbox initially sold very well, but all three platform-holders had difficulty manufacturing and selling the systems profitably.

By September 15, 2005, Microsoft reported a four billion dollar loss in selling the Xbox.^[6]

Xbox 360

Main articles: Xbox 360 and List of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360

NVIDIA ceased production of the Xbox's GPU in August 2005, which marked the end of Xbox production and the quick release of the Xbox 360 on November 22, 2005.

When equipped with a removable hard drive add-on, the Xbox 360 supports a limited number of the Xbox's game library through emulation. Emulation adds support for anti-aliasing as well as upscaling of the still standard definition image. These emulators are periodically updated to add compatibility for older games and are available for free through Xbox Live or as a file download to be burned to a CD/DVD from the Xbox web site. These updates are also available monthly as part of the demo disc that comes with each issue of Official Xbox Magazine. As the architectures are entirely different between Xbox and Xbox 360, software emulation is the only viable option for compatibility without including processors from the original Xbox.

Hardware and accessories

Hardware

See also: Xbox special limited editions

Xbox drives

The Xbox was the first console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to 2007). An Xbox user could rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive, and these songs were used for the custom soundtracks in some games.^[7]

The Xbox was the first product in the gaming industry to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding Technology, which allows real-time Dolby Digital encoding in game consoles. Previous game consoles could only utilize Dolby Digital 5.1 during non-interactive "cut scene" playback.^[8]

The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and runs a custom operating system which exposes APIs based largely on DirectX 8.1; the API commonality led to a common confusion that the OS was a stripped-down version of the Windows 2000 kernel.^[9]

The Xbox itself is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray-loading DVD-ROM drive and the standard-size 3.5 inch hard drive. However, the Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being pulled from the surface on which it resides.

The original game controller design, which was particularly large, was similarly often criticized since it was ill-suited to those with small hands and caused cramping in the hands of some users. In response to these criticisms, a smaller controller was introduced for the Japanese Xbox launch. This Japanese controller (which was briefly imported by even mainstream video game store chains such as GameStop) was subsequently released in other markets as the "Xbox Controller S". In addition, all future Xbox consoles were shipped with a "Controller S", while the original controller (known as Controller "0" or "The Duke") was discontinued.^[10]

Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in an attempt to defeat them), to cut manufacturing costs, and to provide a more reliable DVD-ROM drive (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliable Thomson DVD-ROM drives used). Later generations of Xbox units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. These units would not be covered under the extended warranty.

In 2002, Microsoft and NVIDIA entered arbitration over a dispute on the pricing of NVIDIA's chips for the Xbox.^[11] NVIDIA's filing with the SEC indicated that Microsoft was seeking a US$13 million discount on shipments for NVIDIA's fiscal year 2002. Additionally, Microsoft alleged violations of the agreement the two companies entered, sought reduced chipset pricing, and sought to ensure that NVIDIA fulfill Microsoft's chipset orders without limits on quantity. The matter was settled on February 6, 2003, and no terms of the settlement were released.^[12]

Launch-era Xbox gaming units were manufactured in Hungary, while the controllers were manufactured primarily in Indonesia.

Technical specifications

• CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz Custom Intel Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package. 180 nm process.^[13]
  • SSE floating point SIMD. Two single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
  • MMX integer SIMD.
  • 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front side bus to GPU.
  • 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache".
• Shared memory subsystem
  • 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; 6.4 GB/s
  • Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location.
• GPU and system chipset: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and NVIDIA.
  • Geometry engine: 115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak)
  • 4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each
  • 932 megapixels/second (233 MHz x 4 pipelines), 1,864 megatexels/second (932 MP x 2 texture units) (peak)
    • Peak triangle performance (32pixel divided from filrate): 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/sec raw or w. 2 textures and lit.
      • 485,416 triangles per frame at 60fps
      • 970,833 triangles per frame at 30fps
  • 4 textures per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing (NV Quincunx, supersampling, multisampling)
  • Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering
  • Similar to the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 PC GPUs.
• Storage media
  • 2x – 5x (2.6 MB/s – 6.6 MB/s) CAV DVD-ROM
  • 8 or 10 GB, 3.5 in, 5,400 RPM hard disk. Formatted to 8 GB. FATX file system.
  • Optional 8 MB memory card for saved game file transfer.
• Audio processor: NVIDIA "MCPX" (a.k.a. SoundStorm "NVAPU")
  • 64 3D sound channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
  • HRTF Sensaura 3D enhancement
  • MIDI DLS2 Support
  • Monaural, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital Live 5.1, and DTS Surround (DVD movies only) audio output options
• Integrated 10/100BASE-TX wired ethernet
• DVD movie playback
• A/V outputs: composite video, S-Video, component video, SCART, HDMI Optical Digital TOSLINK, and stereo RCA analog audio
• Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p, 720p, 1080i
• Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB 1.1 ports
• Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb)
• Dimensions: 320 × 100 × 260 mm (12.5 × 4 × 10.5 in)

Official accessories

Audio/video connectors

• Standard AV cable: Provides composite video and monaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. Comes with the system. European systems come with an RCA jack to SCART converter block in addition to the cable.
• RF Adapter: Provides a combined audio and video signal on an RF connector.
• Advanced AV Pack: Provides S-Video and TOSLINK audio in addition to the RCA composite video and stereo audio of the Standard AV Cable.
• High Definition AV Pack: Intended for HDTVs, it provides a YPrPb component video signal over three RCA connectors. Also provides analog RCA and digital TOSLINK audio outputs.
• Advanced SCART cable: The European equivalent to the Advanced AV Pack, providing a full RGB video SCART connection in place of S-Video, RCA composite and stereo audio connections (composite video and stereo are still provided by the cable, through the SCART connector, in addition to the RGB signal), while retaining the TOSLINK audio connector. As Europe had no HDTV standard when the Xbox was released, no high definition cable was provided in those markets.

Numerous unofficial third-party cables and breakout boxes exist that provide combinations of outputs not found in these official video packages; however, with the exception of a few component-to-VGA converters and custom-built VGA boxes, the four official video packages represent all of the Xbox's possible outputs. This output selectivity is made possible by the Xbox's SCART-like AVIP port.

Networking

• Ethernet (Xbox Live) cable: An Ethernet cable with RJ-45 connection for connecting the Xbox to a broadband modem or router. The Xbox also can connect to Xbox LIVE.
• Xbox Wireless Adapter: a wireless bridge which converts data running through an Ethernet cable to a wireless (802.11b or 802.11g) signal to connect to a wireless LAN. While the official Wireless Adapter guarantees compatibility with the Xbox, almost any wireless bridge can be used.
• Xbox Live Starter Kit: A subscription and installation pack for the Xbox Live service, as well as a headset (with monaural earpiece and microphone) that connects to a control box that plugs into the top expansion slot of a controller. The headset can in fact be replaced with most standard earpiece-and-microphone headsets; headset specialist Plantronics produces various officially licensed headsets, including a special-edition headset for Halo 2.
• System Link cable: A Cat 5 Ethernet crossover cable for connecting together two consoles or a Cat 5 straight through cable used in conjunction with an Ethernet hub for connecting up to four consoles, for up to 16 total players. This functionality is similar to Sega's DirectLink for Sega Saturn.

Multimedia

• Xbox Windows Media Center Extender: A software kit released by Microsoft which allows Xbox to act as a Windows Media Center Extender to stream content from a Windows XP Media Center Edition computer. It can also be used for DVD playback.

• DVD Playback Kit: Required in order to play DVD movies, the kit includes an infrared remote control and receiver. DVD playback was not included as a standard feature of the Xbox due to licensing issues with the DVD format that would have added extra cost to the console's base price. By selling a DVD remote separately, Microsoft was able to bundle the cost of the DVD licensing fee with it. Although there is nothing to prevent the Xbox from acting as a progressive scan DVD player, Microsoft chose not to enable this feature in the Xbox DVD kit in order to avoid royalty payments to the patent-holder of progressive scan DVD playback. The DVD Playback kit only plays DVDs from the local region. The DVD Playback kit will also allow the Xbox to play VCD movies. By default, the Xbox can only play Xbox games and audio CDs.

• Xbox Music Mixer: A utility software bundled with a microphone that connects to an adapter that plugs into the top expansion slot of a controller. It provides a music player with 2D/3D visualizations as well as basic karaoke functions. It also allows users to transfer pictures in JPEG format (to create slide shows) as well as audio in MP3 or WMA format (for karaoke or a custom game soundtrack) from a Windows XP or Windows Vista machine running the Xbox Music Mixer PC Tool.

Controllers and removable storage

The original Duke controller (left) and the Controller S (right).

The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a directional pad, two analog triggers, a Back button, a Start button, two accessory slots, six 8-bit analog action buttons (A/Green, B/Red, X/Blue, Y/Yellow, and Black and White buttons.^[14]

The standard Xbox controller (also known as the "Duke" controller) was originally the Xbox controller for all territories except Japan. The Duke controller has been criticized for being relatively large and bulky compared to other video game controllers (it was awarded "Blunder of the Year" by Game Informer in 2001^[15] and a Guinness World Record for the biggest controller in Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2008). The black and white buttons are located above the A, B, X, and Y buttons, and the Back/Start buttons are located between and below the d-pad and right analog stick.

The Controller S, a smaller, lighter Xbox controller was originally the standard Xbox controller only in Japan (codenamed "Akebono").^[16] It was designed to be more comfortable for those with smaller hands.^[17][18] The controller S was released in other territories by popular demand, and eventually replaced the standard controller in the Xbox's retail package, with the larger original controller available as an accessory. The white and black buttons are located below the A, B, X, and Y buttons, and the Back/Start buttons are similarly placed below the left analog stick. This controller has received its share of criticism as well, especially with regards to placement of the black/white and back/start buttons.^[19]

An 8 MB removable solid state memory card can be plugged into the controllers, onto which game saves can either be copied from the hard drive when in the Xbox dashboard's memory manager or saved during a game. Most Xbox games can be copied to the memory unit and to another console but some Xbox saves are digitally signed, each console has a unique signing key, and some games (e.g., Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball) will not load saved games signed by a different Xbox, limiting the utility of the memory card. Additionally, game saves can be tagged as uncopyable, or simply padded to over 8 MB (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). The signing mechanism has been reverse-engineered by the Xbox hacking community, who have developed tools to modify savegames to work in a different console, though the signing key of the recipient Xbox (the 'HDkey'), and the ramped-up title key of the game (the 'authkey'), must be known. It is also possible to save an Xbox Live account on a memory unit, to simplify its use on more than one Xbox.

Games

Main articles: List of Xbox launch titles and List of Xbox games

The Xbox launched in North America on November 15, 2001. The greatest success of the Xbox's launch titles was Halo: Combat Evolved which was well received by critics.^[20] Its sequel, Halo 2, is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game worldwide.^[3] Other successful launch titles included NFL Fever 2002,^[21] Project Gotham Racing,^[22] and Dead or Alive 3;^[23] however, the failure of several first-party games (including Azurik: Rise of Perathia)^[24] damaged the initial public reputation of the Xbox.

Although the console enjoyed strong third party support from its inception, many early Xbox games did not take full advantage of its powerful hardware, with few additional features or graphical improvements to distinguish them from the PS2 version, thus negating one of the Xbox's main selling points. Additionally, Sony countered the Xbox for a short time by temporarily securing PlayStation 2 exclusives for highly anticipated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (although they were later ported to the Xbox and are no longer exclusive).

In 2002 and 2003, several releases helped the Xbox to gain momentum and distinguish itself from the PS2. The Xbox Live online service was launched in late 2002 alongside pilot titles MotoGP, MechAssault and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Several best-selling and critically acclaimed titles for the Xbox were published, such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Ninja Gaiden and LucasArts' Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Take-Two Interactive's exclusivity deal with Sony was amended to allow Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels to be published on the Xbox. In addition, many other publishers got into the trend of releasing the Xbox version alongside the PS2 version, instead of delaying it for months.

In 2004, Halo 2 set records as the highest-grossing release in entertainment history making over $125 million in its first day,^[25] as well as being a successful killer app for the online service. That year, Microsoft and Electronic Arts reached a deal that would see the latter's popular titles enabled on Xbox Live.

Xbox Live

Xbox Live logo

Main article: Xbox Live

On November 15, 2002, Microsoft launched its Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing subscribers to play online Xbox games with (or against) other subscribers all around the world and download new content for their games to the system's hard drive. This online service works exclusively with a broadband Internet connection. Approximately 250,000 subscribers had signed up within two months of Xbox Live's launch.^[26] In July 2004, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live had reached one million subscribers, and a year later, in July 2005, that membership had reached two million.

Xbox modding

Xbox motherboard with installed modchip.

The popularity of the Xbox, as well as its relatively short 90 day warranty, inspired efforts to circumvent the built-in hardware and software security mechanisms, a practice informally known as modding. Within a few months of its release the Xbox BIOS was dumped and hacked by MIT student Andrew Huang so that it would skip digital signature checks and media flags, allowing unsigned code, Xbox game backups, etc., to be run. This was possible due to flaws in the Xbox's security.^[27] Modding an Xbox in any manner will void its warranty, as it may require disassembly of the console. Having a modified Xbox may also disallow it from accessing Xbox Live if detected by Microsoft, as it contravenes the Xbox Live Terms of Use,^[28] however most modchips can be disabled, allowing the Xbox to boot in a "stock" configuration, softmods can be disabled by "coldbooting" a game (having the game in the DVD drive before turning the console on, so the softmod is not loaded) or by using a multiboot configuration.

Four main methods exist of modding the Xbox :

• Modchip: Installing a modchip inside the Xbox that bypasses the original BIOS, with a hacked BIOS to circumvent the security mechanisms.^[29]
• TSOP flashing: Re-flashing the onboard BIOS chip with a hacked BIOS to circumvent the security mechanisms. The Xbox BIOS is contained on a commodity EEPROM (the 'TSOP'), which can be made writable by the Xbox by bridging points on the motherboard.^[30] Flashing is usually carried out by using a specially crafted gamesave (see 'Game save exploit', below) to flash the onboard TSOP, but the TSOP can also be de-soldered and re-written in a standard EEPROM programmer. This method only works on 1.0 to 1.5 Xboxes, as later versions replace the commodity TSOP with an LPC ROM contained within a proprietary chip.^[31]
• Softmods: Installing additional software files to the Xbox hard drive, which exploit programming errors in the Dashboard to gain control of the system, and overwrite the in-memory copy of the BIOS.^[32] Soft modification is known to be safe for Xbox Live if the user enables multibooting with the Microsoft dashboard and an original game disc is used.^[33]
  • Game save exploit: Using select official game releases to load game saves that exploit buffer overflows in the save game handling.^[34] When these special game saves are loaded, they access an interface with scripts for installing the necessary softmod files. Disassembly of the Xbox is not required when installing most game save exploits.
  • Hot swap: Using a computer to change the data on the hard drive. This requires having the Xbox unlock the hard drive when it is turned on, then swapping the powered hard drive into a running computer. By using a Linux-based Live CD, data on the hard drive can be read, altered, and deleted. In most cases, an automated script will automatically install the softmod files directly to the Xbox hard drive. This technique has been used extensively to harbor cheating on many online games. Disassembly of the console is required to perform a hot swap.

Operating Systems

Beyond gaming, a modded Xbox can be used as a media center with the Xbox Media Center.^[35]

There are also distributions of Linux developed specifically for the Xbox, including those based on Gentoo, Debian (see also Xebian), Damn Small Linux, and Dyne:bolic.

Alternative operating systems:

• Xbox Linux is a project that ported Linux to the Xbox.
• FreeBSD has also been ported to Xbox.
• Windows CE ^[36]
• Windows 98 ^[37]
• Mac OS X made possible through emulation via PearPC on Xebian Linux ^[38]

One advantage over a regular, unmodded Xbox, is the ability to use a trainer.

UK advertising controversy

In 2002 the Independent Television Commission (ITC) banned a television advertisement for the Xbox in the United Kingdom after responses from certain members of the public deemed it distasteful. It depicted a mother giving birth to a boy who is fired like a projectile through the hospital window and ages rapidly as he flies through the air screaming, before crashing into his own grave. The advertisement ended with the slogan Life is short. Play more.^[39]

References

External links

• Official Xbox website
• Xbox at the Open Directory Project