The Xbox is a home video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It is the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993.
The console was announced in March 2000. With the release of the PlayStation 2, which featured the ability to playback CD-ROMs and DVDs in addition to playing games, Microsoft became concerned that game consoles would threaten the personal computer as an entertainment device for living rooms. Whereas most previous games consoles used specially designed hardware, the Xbox was built around standard PC components. It uses variations of Microsoft Windows and DirectX as its operating system to support games and media playback, and is powered by a Intel Pentium III CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 3-based GPU. The Xbox was the first console to feature a built-in hard disk. The console was designed to support broadband connectivity to the Internet via an integrated Ethernet port and Xbox Live, a fee-based online gaming service that launched in 2002. The popularity of the system's blockbuster titles such as Bungie's Halo 2 (2004) contributed to the popularity of first-person shooters and online console gaming.
