🎮 Xbox at 25: the console that changed online gaming
Microsoft's first Xbox launched on 15 November 2001. A quarter of a century later, the brand is again searching for a new direction.
The mystery
In 2001 Sony and Nintendo ruled game consoles with fully custom machines. Microsoft, a software company, had never made one. How did a newcomer reshape the way people play together, and why is it back at a crossroads now?
The answer
Microsoft built the first Xbox from familiar PC parts: an Intel Pentium III chip adapted for the console, an Nvidia graphics chip and 64MB of shared memory, so PC developers could port games easily. It added two things consoles rarely had: a hard drive, for game saves and even your own music ripped from CDs, and an Ethernet port, betting on broadband instead of dial-up modems. Xbox Live followed in November 2002 with friends lists, gamertags, voice chat and built-in multiplayer, a template every console now copies. The Xbox 360 added digital downloads, wireless controllers and the Kinect motion sensor, which became the fastest-selling consumer gadget of early 2011. Then the Xbox One stumbled: it focused on TV and an always-online plan with limits on used games, and players pushed back hard.
Now think about this
If you designed the next Xbox, would it still be a box under the TV, or just a service on every screen?
